


Brae Saoidh

by bansheesquad (deathwailart)



Series: Brae Saoidh [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Banter, Dwarves, Elves, Families of Choice, Gen, High Fantasy, Mercenaries, Snark, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-06-27 11:58:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 36,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19790416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/bansheesquad
Summary: The tale of the Boneflayers mercenary company living true and free in a world increasingly grown smaller as wars brew between rival nations with the burning light of the Order attempting to purge the last of the heretics.Asher Hardie leads his band across the whole of Brae Saoidh to take jobs as they will as they find they can't escape the politics and intrigue changing their homes even living out on the fringe of the world.





	1. Chapter 1

Not that there was ever a pleasant time to break camp but Asher Hardie found it to be at its very worst when the rain was horizontal and had put the fire out during the last watch, the ground beneath his tent already squelching when he rose to his feet. Bronson sighed plaintively as he packed up his belongings before he'd need take down the tent. He glanced out, catching sight of Amalia wrapped in a bearskin, its face pulled low over her own attempting for the fifth or sixth time to cast a spell that'd survive the deluge. Sighing too, he scratched his huge scarred hound beneath what remained of his left ear and stuck his head out the flap, water soaking down the multiple braids roped together down the middle of his scalp, the shaved sides freezing in an instant.  
  
"Oi Amalia! Leave off, make do with what we've got!" He bellowed above the rain.  
  
"Shut up 'm counting in 'ere!" The muffled shout came from the next tent, Yngvi's irritated voice loud enough to make it through two layers of oil cloth.  
  
"Can I roast Yngvi?" Amalia asked. He couldn't see her face from this distance but he knew her well enough to imagine the wicked grin that'd be there on her face.  
  
"Ain't enough on him to make us a decent breakfast."  
  
"True."  
  
He didn't watch to see if she listened to him, instead rolling his bedroll tight as he could to fit inside his pack in the hopes it'd stay dry if the rain continued. Bronson ambled over, head-butted Asher as gently as any dog of his stature might when his head came up past his hip; Asher wasn't a small man by any means, rocked back a step when unprepared for it.  
  
"I know, lad, I know." Not the youngest of hounds these days by Asher's reckoning with days of rain not agreeing with creaking joints same as other old warriors Asher had known but he bore it with far greater dignity and few complaints in his opinion. Blowing on his hands, he walked on his knees to get at Bronson's back left leg, rubbing it briskly until good and bad eye closed in rapture, not inconsiderably bulk resting on Asher who kissed the top of his head. "Go round 'em up. I'll take the tent down."  
  
Bronson barked, stump of a tail where someone had once cruelly docked it wagging ecstatically. By the time Asher had shouldered both pack and weapons he could hear the shrieking laughter of Yngvi and Gunnar as two dwarves found themselves set upon while he went about hauling up tent pegs, lines, folding up the whole mess of sodden cloth for their cart. Across the camp he waved to Melisende and Liadan both doing the same, Amalia and Nasir both already done. Tossing the tent into the cart as Amalia hauled herself up and in alongside Nasir, she glanced over to the sole standing tent. Nasir, having been the first one up since he'd be riding off ahead of them on their third horse had hitched up the cart with their sturdier two beasts although maybe that was on account of Amalia being the one in the seat for the first leg of the journey, he certainly left it to Asher and the dwarves whenever it was their turn if he truly couldn't be bothered.  
  
Asher supposed that if he shared a bed with someone who could set you on fire, he'd not risk it either.  
  
"Say the word. Just one." Amalia called, raising her eyebrows in a way no one should in the damp, in the early hours.  
  
"You know she's good for it," Nasir added, one brown hand dragging black curls off his forehead.   
  
"Nah, I love m'boys."  
  
"Your dirty smelly boys!" Not that it needed adding, it tended to go without saying when it came to them but sometimes Amalia _did_ like to drive home the dwarves he'd brought into their lives all those years ago in Belnesse, his two young scamps. Not so young as they were, not quite scamps now. More goblins. Filth goblins. Irredeemably filthy.  
  
"Congealed in the finest gutter." Asher agreed, setting off out of the way of a tawny-skinned elf and pale half-elf who looked as human as himself, Amalia and Nasir.   
  
With a sharp whistle through his teeth, he called Bronson's attention, the hound bounding out as Asher ducked inside a tent where two dark-haired and stubbled wheezing dwarves somewhat alike about the face lay wheezing on the ground.  
  
" _Mercy_." Gunnar pleaded, a shade darker and heavier set than Yngvi.  
  
"Your beast means to eat us," Yngvi chocked through his laughter, struggling to sit up.  
  
They were packed at least, Asher was glad to see. "It's Amalia you need to worry about, not Bronson."  
  
"Never said _Bronson_ was your beast, did I?" It was the sly smirk on Yngvi's face that threatened more laughter as he got up, hauling Gunnar to his feet too.   
  
"We'd never be so cruel about a fellow lad."  
  
"Get your arses moving." Asher swung lazy swats at their heads, sighing at the squawking, the complaints at his brutishness he'd heard a hundred times at the very least as their last bits and pieces were stuffed into packs, the pair attempting to shoulder past him and out of the tent. "I think not," he said in a low voice with a grin, unceremoniously hoisting a dwarf and pack each under either arm to march them to the cart even as they squirmed, protesting vociferously at this cruel treatment until he'd dumped them in beside the tents to a gale of laughter from the rest of the company.  
  
"Animal!" Yngvi spluttered even as he laughed too, leaning forward to help in getting Bronson up and in. "Who raised you?"  
  
"Oh we all know to speak of that is to summon it." Liadan had bent forward to whisper right in Yngvi's ear, quieter than a mouse and he shrieked.  
  
It was short work to jog over and haul up the last tent, to do the final check for anything forgotten then for Asher to clamber into the cart himself with a nod to Nasir who flicked the reins lazily, horses starting as they sloshed and squelched their way through the mud.  
  
"Time to hit the road Boneflayers!" He called over the noise and the rain. "May a dry bed if not a warm one await us!"  
  
The weather didn't dampen the enthusiasm for a morning toast as it were, not if the cheers were anything to go by.   
  
The rain dogged them the whole morning as the sky lightened but little, a grey band of miserable cloud that didn't seem in any particular hurry to lift as they huddled beneath a mish mash of wolf and bear pelts, some of them pelts alone, others more akin to furred blankets with hoods and sleeves. Yet Asher's own spirits weren't any bleaker for it as the cart made it slow lumbering way over the rutted ground, scratching the scruff of Bronson's neck each time they were jostled sharply. It wasn't a short jaunt from here to the nameless spot for their next job by any means but they were all of them practiced at it as Yngvi started up with his list of inventory, shoving Asher first.  
  
"You need to tell me what you need, you didn't last night."  
  
Asher gave Bronson a final rub before sitting back, arms stretched along the sides of the cart as he sat a little lower, cold rain dripping down the back of his neck. "'m easy."  
  
"We all know that: tents ain't walls and taverns walls are as good as!" Amalia interrupted, half-turned from her seat up front where she was level with Nasir on his horse. He laughed, kissing the corner of her mouth. "I'll see you there, ride safe."  
  
"Will do; promise you a good sturdy bed." With a final kiss, the horses all used to such nonsense from them, he pulled away and nodded to the rest of them. "I'll see you when you get there, I'll have rooms waiting if I can, if not…we'll do what we can. But there should be an inn from what I've heard. Try not to break any wheels on this thing; we'll be a while before we can go replacing any!" Clicking his tongue and nudging the horse with his heels, he rode off ahead, cutting off the path sharply; a quicker road that a horse and rider could take that their lumbering cart couldn't, not if they didn't want to wreck it.  
  
Asher grinned and waved him off with the rest of them, attention given to Yngvi who sat with an inkpot between his boots to hold it still, small board and parchment on his knees with his coat and furs shielding him from the rain as he got to Asher's part of the list. "Basic food provisions are done, ale for the cask. Any of your weird mead we'd need to get special so y'know. Your stuff. That you need. I know we probably won't get much where we're going but I want to be prepared for when we get somewhere we _can_ get the good stuff and you never know, some of these little places get surprises through. 'Specially given what we know about the job."  
  
"How long we been doing this Yngvi?"  
  
Asher's sigh as he said had Yngvi grinning through his teeth. "Maybe if I didn't need to explain it to you every time!"  
  
"Just the usual, I can get whatever else from my own take."  
  
Yngvi made an aggrieved noised and Asher counted his breaths until the dwarf emerged to glare at him. "What's even the point of me writing up inventory that I go give to Melisende so she can check our financials if you keep pulling shit like this?"  
  
"He has a point." Asher glanced over to Melisende who had her eyes out on their surroundings much like Liadan. "We get paid. Some goes to us individually for our own spending. Some is in the cache. The rest is to help for jobs. Trap components. Arrows. Salves. You don't need to keep dipping into your personal funds for it."  
  
"Way I see it, right, I founded us. So I can bankroll myself and throw the rest of it in the cache. That way I know we're good."  
  
"Asher believe me," Liadan this time, the same harsh pull to her vowels as Yngvi and Gunnar thanks to the same city they'd all been raised by. "We ain't hurting for coin."  
  
"'Cause I'm putting it there. Yngvi do the usual. Can't believe this, can't a man be charitable?"  
  
"There's charitable, there's demented, there's being a tit."  
  
It was a voice that hadn't piped up in all this, tucked on Yngvi's far side causing his brother to let out a spluttering snort of amusement. Asher put a hand to his chest as if struck.  
  
" _Gunnar_! Even you? All of you? In my cart?"  
  
"Our father-" The dwarf continued or tried to.  
  
"Is the very definition of demented and tit."  
  
The standoff grew until Yngvi smacked Asher hard in the leg with his little board, closing the ink bottle to pack it all away, giving Bronson a nudge and mutter to budge up. Asher allowed himself the luxury of leaning back beneath slate grey skies as the rumbling of the cart lulled him back to sleep.

* * *

  
  
At a scarred table where decades of alcohol and worse had seeped into the wood to strip off then replace the varnish, Asher Hardie swung long legs, boots and all up; the table had witnessed far worse than whatever muck he might have traipsed in with him as he leant back as much as he dared in a chair not built for a man with the blood of the mountain folk of Riach running through him. Across from him Melisende was refilling whatever passed for the house red which was probably the house wine with a healthy glug of beetroot vinegar thrown in to get such a lurid colour that stained the lips such a shade and puckered the mouth to drink it. It'd certainly go a long way towards explaining the odd aftertaste of the stew that had been served to them though whatever the owner was trying to pass off as mutton likely as not didn't warrant thinking too hard about. That was the way of things when you stopped in places that hardly earned even a dot on the map let alone a name, the signpost faded and eroded by years of sun and rain. Or it could be a holdover from years of war between Virene and Aubin. Smart tactics to not tell anyone where they were unless they bothered to ask and a place as small as this, probably not worth the time to soldiers and the more cutthroat mercenaries. They'd seen plenty of it in the days since they'd left camp, old trebuchets left to rot, faded banners clinging to rusted lances thrust into the earth that fluttered in the breeze as they passed. How many dead had been beneath them no one had said.  
  
This was the way of things.  
  
Unlike the present company around – and under – the table, all very much alive. To Asher's left sat Liadan, still with a bruise beneath her right eye fading into a sickly yellow from when some brute on the last job had slammed her own crossbow into her face in a struggle that had been blooming since they'd broken their last camp. She was leaning down beneath the table to offer scraps to Bronson, ever the recipient of any and old food unwanted or not eaten fast enough by any of them. To Asher's right and right again were Yngvi and Gunnar, Yngvi doodling something in his notebook, Gunnar's head drooping and then swinging back upright whenever it hit his chin. Not that Asher could blame him as he tried settling himself again to the ominous creak of the chair beneath him, trying to stave off the throbbing in the small of his back; it had been a long road here in miserable weather with horses reluctant to get them into a building that sagged from years of damp and disrepair. The horses would have a better time of it in the stables.  
  
Across from Asher was Melisende, second in command, still intent on finishing the wine because alcohol was alcohol and you didn't turn it down even if it was used for cleaning the bar. Or poisoning the rats. She'd been a mercenary longer than him and she was out of Aubin for good measure, she'd know what to do with any sort of wine regardless of dubious provenance. Which left Amalia and Nasir, sandwiched between her and Liadan, heads rested on shoulders in turn, and Asher had already traded rooms to be away from them even if it'd cost him; the first night after weeks of camping when they had a bed and walls to themselves wasn't a thing you slept through easily. Hopefully they'd not be paying damages though it'd be good for the rest of the journey if they did.   
  
Unless Amalia set anyone on fire. Hard to tell where her temper might take her. Although judging from how well Nasir already looked despite a hard ride to beat them here, the wonders of one night in a bed, Amalia's temper might settle.  
  
"We're all set for tomorrow then?" Nasir asked, dragging Asher up and out of his own head, heels catching the table close to Yngvi's hands when he wobbled.  
  
"Think so, or close to. Not like it's the biggest of jobs is it? Milk run really."   
  
"Asher," Melisende's voice was just sharp enough to get his attention and no more; wouldn't do to draw the attention of the sleepy patrons in this tiny tavern more than they already had just for daring to take up the space.  
  
"Right, right, don't leave things to chance—my room it is, c'mon then, we paid up?"   
  
"Yeah," Liadan replied, already pushing her seat back with a scrape against the floor, adding to the scars there. "Half-expected to be royally fleeced by that barmaid but…part of me is sad she didn't go robbing us now."  
  
"Like she'd try when she got a decent look," Nasir muttered. "Told all of you there was a reason I picked this place, she thought about it with me, let her do it for a drink or two then flashed the goods." The goods in question were his bow and arrow, the bow only one of several that he owned but this one capped with dark metal, soft fur for the muffler; not a huge bow but anything capable of bringing down your dinner was more than capable of bringing down a man.  
  
"Anything else we should know?" Liadan asked as they filed out, Asher at the rear to chase up the dwarves who weren't for moving even if it was in more in the direction of a bed, urging Bronson to nudge at their backs as they lagged behind.  
  
"It's not a town, it's barely a village," Nasir explained, a brown hand raking through damp curls (unlike the rest of them though, Nasir was wet from a bath, not the rain). "There's not any of the Order about either so I think we could call it a hamlet without too much trouble."  
  
"No Order? Shit, maybe it's not so bad a place." Amalia sounded pleased and Asher agreed with her there, marking the place up higher in his estimations. "Can you add it to the list?"  
  
"Already done."  
  
"Cheers darling."  
  
" _Cheers darling_ ," Yngvi echoed, swooning backwards and into Asher with an exaggerated air, batting his eyelashes.  
  
"Get moving," Asher said, grinning. "I won't save you if she sets your arse on fire for that, I'll just carry you to her."  
  
"Heartless man."  
  
"You know it." The stairs were old, sagging as the rest of the building particularly towards the middle, creaking loudly as they all made their way up but they were the only patrons and had been for a while according to Nasir who'd relayed the whole sorry tale that Asher was working hard to forget.   
  
That this place had enough rooms to house them all, even doubled up (Bronson, given his size, counted as a roommate to them and as equal member of their company) had been the sort of surprise that spoke to the better days it had to have enjoyed once, before the worst of the wars certainly or before the more protracted excursions between Virene and Aubin that ground those places along their borders and disputed territories down, flour at the mill. Before it had spread over to Riach too. Though if it didn't have an Order presence…that'd be something to look into. Or something Nasir hadn't been able to talk to them about when he'd met them downstairs upon their arrival after finally meeting him when he'd gone ahead to make all their arrangements for the job as was his custom. Some things you just didn't do in front of the locals, going over their history was one, people tended to get touchy.  
  
His door was open by the time Asher got to it despite the key being in his pocket, no shortage of culprits since out of all of them, only him and Amalia couldn't pick a lock at all, Gunnar still able to do it with more of a struggle.  
  
"Bit presumptuous, could've asked or used one of yours," he said, closing up once the dwarves were herded in and there was nothing like all of The Boneflayers packed into one small room not meant to hold much more than the few fixtures and fittings shoved in just so they could get away with calling them rooms for rent: a bed shoved into the corner, a nightstand wedged in next to the bed, a tiny fireplace where the ashes clearly hadn't been changed for months that Asher wouldn't be lighting no matter how cold it got. Not even a basin or jug for water. But then again, he'd been surprised at a freshly bathed Nasir so the place still having a washroom downstairs was about all the luxury afforded.   
  
Last in, door locked, Asher ended up seated on the floor of his own room since there was little enough space for all of them: Yngvi and Gunnar had their backs against the bed, Nasir and Amalia were wedged in by the fireplace, Melisende and Liadan were by the nightstand they'd dragged roughly into the centre to fit as a makeshift table, only highlighting how sad and small a thing it truly was to look at it.  
  
"Why were we so up for beds?" Yngvi asked, looking about the place as he poked Gunnar awake. "Camp is better than this. Dinner at camp is better than this. Could've done a spot of hunting. Could've gone fishing since there's a river. Could've foraged up somethin'—"  
  
"Sometimes," Amalia hissed, leaning forward with the smile she had right before the air filled with the stink of burning flesh and screams, "people want to shag in a bed Yngvi."  
  
"You'll end up breaking it. Straw and nails everywhere. And rats. Just—"   
  
Asher choked on his own spit at the explosion noise Yngvi mustered, Nasir too who earned an elbow to the ribs from Amalia, her blonde hair whipping about her face as she turned her wrath on the nearest target.  
  
"Don't encourage those urchins!"  
  
"Don't include me in this!" Gunnar, woken up by the noise, the jostling, or maybe the idea that the sooner this was done that he could finally get to some semblance of a bed, protested, the picture of innocence that his brother for their shared dark hair, dark eyes, and pale skin ever in need of a wash, the sort of grime baked in from a life in the undercity of Belnesse that only a true deep scrubbing and sloughing would remove, never was.   
  
Melisende sighed. A deep aggrieved sigh. The type of sigh Asher had been on the receiving end of himself for more than a decade now; Melisende's elven nature showed in her being small and lithe, barely reaching his shoulders though who that said more about Asher wasn't sure. He was half Riach's mountainfolk more recently than most and it showed plainly in him as it did most of his siblings, often the tallest man in the room more often than not. If there was someone to listen to though, it was always Melisende, and Asher had never managed to shake off being fifteen, new to a wide world and her steering him through it as his head came close to coming off more times than he knew at the time.  
  
"Folks," he clapped his hands together, voice raised not in the battle master's commanding register for out in the open field or they'd all hear him downstairs and that would've defeated the purpose but enough to get everyone's ears pricked up. Literally in Bronson's case. Poor half-deaf soul that he was. "We've had a long journey here for the most or a long wait in your case," Asher gestured to Nasir who extended a hand outward from his chest with a grateful smile, "but we know it'll be worth it. The job isn't too far from here, standard work for us but that's no excuse to take the risk of making a dog's breakfast of it.  
  
"Group of bandits – the usual rowdy bunch by the sound of things – are in an old fortress, used to be some sort of castle I think?" Asher glanced to Nasir who nodded.  
  
"Way back when, no one knows who the castle belonged to. I got as close as I could, asked a few of the locals who seemed as if they gave a toss about those matters and calling it a castle is, how to put it… _charitable_ ," Nasir explained, pointing to the map Liadan had set out on the tiny table, "there's not much of it left but what I did manage to see, it's a decent sized group of bandits like we were warned about, not too much in the way of fortifications but they'll have the high ground."  
  
"Unless we can sneak in and flank," Melisende suggested as she pulled a stick of charcoal from a pouch in her belt – already marking out potential paths. "What's the terrain like?"  
  
Nasir sucked in a breath, stepping away from Amalia so he could crowd in against the table. "As shit as you'd expect it to be. It's rocky, not too steep, overgrown so I don't know what else from where I was creeping around for the ground itself."  
  
"But it'd work? For an ambush?" Melisende pressed.  
  
"For us? Yeah. If we can get in quiet like first so that'd mean you, me, Liadan, maybe Yngvi?" Nasir looked to each of them in turn and then to Asher  
  
For his part, Asher lifted his shoulders into a shrug. "Look mate, you've been up there, not me, we can ask about a bit if that'll get us more but if we've been sent here and no one else has done anything about them up 'til now, there's probably a reason for that so unless anyone thinks they can do it without tipping our hand, we're going in on what we've got. I'm good on letting you four take point on that, two either side if you can manage it?"  
  
"That's what I was thinking," Liadan said as she held out her hand for the charcoal, sketching out rough arrows and two crosses either side. "Nasir and I on either side, one of us gets Melisende, one of us gets Yngvi—"  
  
"Don't I get a say?" Yngvi asked from his spot on the floor, everyone turning to glance at him.  
  
"Get up off your arse and no, you don't. Nasir?"  
  
"Ladies' choice on this."   
  
"Fabulous, I'll take Melisende then. We take out anyone we see from a distance, gives them," she nodded to Melisende and Yngvi who pushed himself to his feet, a hand on his brother's shoulder as he did on the way to grabbing the edge of the table, "a chance to get closer."  
  
"Buy me enough time and I'll get traps laid down depending what we find in there, just mind your feet everyone." Yngvi turned with infinite slowness to look at Asher who didn't dignify that with a response. Instead his foot throbbed. It had been a _month_ already. "What about the rest of you?"  
  
"Storm the front. If it's all quiet for you four then we'll draw them out the front way – you could even lay a set of traps if you want before you go up, Amalia can set up some sort of fire to get their attention?"  
  
"Oh absolutely, been a while since we've done that one." Amalia grinned, her fingers flickering before she tossed a lazy curl of flame to finally light whatever remained in the fireplace; once it would have startled them, by now it was expected, only a matter of waiting to see how long it took her. "I might see what I can find out here in the morning, we're not ready to go storm the castle yet are we?"  
  
"Don't think so, there's not a rush is there Melisende?" Asher asked, not entirely sure of every detail of the arrangements after the long ride down in the driver's seat.  
  
"So long as they're all dealt with for good and the sooner the better, that was it. The usual about mayhem but given that it's us they've hired…well they know what they're dealing with."  
  
Liadan snorted, brushing her hair from her face, a smear of charcoal streaked across her forehead. "No butchery or rampant cruelty."  
  
"Pretty much. It might be worth the time if you can Amalia; if it doesn't come to anything then it's fine but they have to be getting supplied somehow."  
  
"Gunnar, d'you want to come with? You've got a trustworthy face and less of a mouth than your brother here."  
  
"Oi!" Yngvi yelped, ready to complain more until Liadan's hand slapped over his mouth, faster than Asher could get to him.  
  
"Sounds like it'd be fun, didn't see any of ours here but you never know, might be the sort of thing we'd have a hand in or know someone who would," Gunnar said, yawning hugely. "Oh and let me know if any of you want anything nasty for your blades or arrows, I'll need a little time to sort anything specific."  
  
"I'll see you about that in the morning," Melisende replied and Asher saw a few more nods around the table.  
  
"So we're settled then: two quiet flanking teams to take some of them down while the rest of us draw them out from the front, they're trapped between us and that's the end of it. Loot them, haul the bodies back to whatever happens with them. Thank the gods that there's no sick bastards wanting proof this time." Asher glanced around the assembled company as he spoke, watching the nods. "Great, we can go over this again in the morning but I think we're all in need of a bed and probably a wash. Clear off, clear out, you don't need to go to bed but you can't stay here in my room where a man needs his space."  
  
It didn't take as long as he feared to clear everyone out though he did have to haul Gunnar up and to his feet, shoving him Yngvi's way to get him on the way else he'd have had a dwarf sleeping on his floor. And he might have allowed it had he not known that there was a bed large enough for two dwarves in the room that had been paid for so there wasn't any need for him to kip on a dirty floor that had a nice dusty print of a dwarven arse on it. What a sad little place this was, small wonder they'd never stopped through before, there wasn't much need to and there wasn't anything to keep a person here. If there had been farmland it might have reminded Asher of where he'd grown up, the smallness of it, a place forgotten but for the people that lived there and travelled through it though his home hadn't been so lucky as to escape the presence of the Order as this place had, not that it would continue. The Order would come, would bring their God, would sweep through this place and if it would survive would remain to be seen.  
  
Asher wouldn't see it. Asher likely as not wouldn't be back in a place so small as this ever again unless something forced them off the road to rest on their travels.  
  
"C'mon boy, hop up," he urged Bronson who yawned and stretched, rubbing his face against Asher's leg on the way to the bed, a bed that creaked under his weight but nothing more. It'd survive them both. Hopefully.  
  
It might not survive Amalia and Nasir down the hall from the moans already filtering through the thin walls, Asher the furthest from them. He couldn't blame them; they hadn't had a proper bed in a long while even if it was a shit mattress in a shittier room. It was still a bed and still four walls, a tiny table whose sturdiness begged to be tested too.   
  
Deciding he could skip a wash until morning, half to avoid scarring his ears further (though the gods knew he should be immune to the impending racket by now) and half down to a bone rattling exhaustion creeping over him, he sat himself down heavily on the bed in the space his hound had so graciously left him, rummaging in his pack for the things he needed before dragging the table back across to the bed since no one had bothered to move it back to where it belonged. A little more scraping wouldn't be noticed nor would the scrapes on the floor. In the light of the fire and the few torches on the wall that had generously been lit before they'd come up to their rooms, he set out some paper, his quill and ink (that'd need to be refilled the first chance he got, it was getting low already) and settled himself comfortably to write.  
  
_Little sister,_  
  
I don't know when this letter will reach you since we're somewhere that I don't think the couriers stop without good reason so it'll have to wait until we reach something resembling civilisation. All of us are well; about to begin a new job for what should be decent pay in a place that the maps have long forgotten in the aftermath of the war. I'd not say that you should come to a place like this but all the same my heart says that you should if only to get off the farm and see for yourself if it's to your tastes, you'd likely have more luck charming the locals than we will when we try our luck come the morning.  
  
The war – whichever one or whichever part of it – hit this place hard and it doesn't seem to have recovered since though you'd be heartened to know that unlike our home there's not been any sight of the Order here. Everywhere we go, even in Belnesse, corrupt as it is inside and out the Order seems to be, taming the whole world to bend it to its will but we find these pockets where it hasn't touched yet. I think about it when we're on our travels. How the Order came over the sea to these lands and fought to bring their God here with them, saying this was a better way – I've never asked Nasir much about it, it's not much place to go prying, he'll say in his own time even if it's been years – but you see a place like this and Aura you couldn't even find it on a map, it doesn't have a name, it has bandits camped in the ruins of a castle that once was from when Aubin and Virene began their squabbles once the Order stoked those fires and what good has it done?  
  
Didn't they say that they came to civilise us? They who went through all their great trials at the hands of the same gods we all knew once as you and I know to this day that instead found their new God, the one that showed them this path.   
  
All the wars that came and scarred the world Aura, it's such a waste. I can't imagine how beautiful it must have been even when our parents were young. Maybe you should ask our father about it, he saw more of Riach at least before he settled down and found he had a brood of children, accounts to be getting on with, a passion for brewing beer that the taverns can't get enough of.  
  
Hopefully all goes well with this job. Clearing out bandits is simple enough but it seems we've had more and more of it of late in this good clean world we ought to have. I don't know if we're doing a disservice or not. Or if we're doing the job the Order says they're doing.   
  
Or I'm an old man rambling into the small hours.  
  
I'll send something fine should I find it; I'm trusting the last letter and package made it through safely.  
  
Your loving brother,  
Asher  
  
He tucked the letter – writing more of a scrawl than normal even for him, the poor lighting or his exhaustion equally to blame – into his pack before he could think better of it, ready to be sent the first chance he got. Assuming they managed to make their way out of this place.   
  
Rising from the bed, he made his way to blow out the torches and the room filled steadily with smoke that he found he didn't mind so much once he returned to the bed and cracked the window an inch; that it was glass in the pane and not a gauze cover spoke volumes of the better times the place had once known. At the edge of the bed, he fell to his knees with his head bowed, Bronson watching him steadily with his one good eye glinting in the glow from the fire, his one good ear cocked and alert as Asher hauled his shirt over his head, skin prickling at the chill creeping in to flush out the smoke. He put it to one side, took a deep steadying breath and began to run through his prayers.  
  
It wouldn't do to forget his gods no matter how far from home he might ever wander.  
  
When his prayers were said, soundlessly, lips moving in the dark for Asher's gods were not the God of the Order after all, he kicked off his boots, shovel down his trousers and listened to the bed groan under the strain of a man half from the mountains of Riach, too tall, too broad, too carved from a decade and more of living by the axe, the sword, and whatever other weapon he might find to end the fight, and a great scarred dog that fancied himself a war hound that both settled down to sleep as a light rain began to drum against the open window, the fire burning itself down to embers.


	2. Chapter 2

"Country bumpkins," Amalia groused, throwing herself down into the seat next to Asher. He spared her half a glance from the battle-axe over his knee, smooth motions of the whetstone, testing the edge against his thumb as he went; she'd not bothered with her customary leathers, maybe thinking that the mercenary look might hurt her cause.  
  
If she'd gone in with the bulldog chewing a wasp face she had on her now, she probably should've stuck with the leathers.  
  
"Saying nothing then?"  
  
"Waste of my fucking time," she agreed, reaching past him to grab another whetstone to toss in the air, easy up and down, up and down. "Asher was it that shit, growing up somewhere like this?"  
  
"I didn't grow up somewhere like this, I grew up on a farm. It's in a village with a name."  
  
"There's not a difference."  
  
"There's a—well it's not here. It's not clinging on."  
  
"Fair, fair. So it was a waste, where's everyone else?"  
  
"Yngvi and me packed everything up in case we needed to be ready to go a bit after you left earlier, don't know how much you can trust the locals," Asher began and after what Amalia had told him, he was glad that they'd spent the time doing it now, "Gunnar's hopefully finished up with the brewing part of his thing, also down in the stable, seemed the only place for it, think he was onto the weapons coating for folks who wanted it. Everyone else should be about there, said I'd wait out here for you."  
  
Here being the front of the tavern they'd slept at last night. Or tried to. Breakfast had been…an ordeal. Asher had made the right choice getting a room as far from Amalia and Nasir as possible and the owner had just about tipped their meals in their laps so clearly they slept on site too, it had been exactly the sort of settling the body needed before setting off on a job. Greasy food, a decent ribbing, two people attempting to swagger off? The standard fare. Asher had less prep to do than the rest of them for this, it was why he'd said nothing much about waiting. No arrows to fletch, no traps to check, no crossbows to – well he still didn't fully understand what Liadan did with her crossbow, same as all of Yngvi's traps – or poisons and other foul-smelling things to be brewing up. No, he only had himself to get ready, him and a good blade, that was that. Then he'd be out and ready. Amalia wasn't far off either.  
  
Maybe her mood would help, there was a steady heat coming off her.  
  
"They really being that cagey?" He asked when she said nothing, instead settling herself to start braiding her hair back and away from her face.  
  
"Remember that whole line of thinking from last night about them getting supplied somehow and this place being a shithole?"  
  
"Don't remember the shithole bit." Asher grinned as he said it.  
  
"It was loudly implied."  
  
"Oh of course – all right Bronson lad, look who's back. So that's how it went then?"  
  
"Not in so many words but it's the way it is with your boys and their family, don't think they were much wrong about it—"  
  
"Wait, thought Gunnar was with you, trustworthy face and all those lies."  
  
"Oh he was until it became obvious that wasn't going to mean shit and he was smirking and giggling to himself, I sent him back here to get on with something useful instead of witnessing me being ready to slow roast the locals."  
  
Asher nodded, stealing the whetstone out of Amalia's lap where she'd dropped it to get to work on Yngvi's smaller axes, Amalia's hands a blur in the corner of his eye as she worked on her hair. "We'll deal with them and go, they might not be up to much here but we don't know what state we'll be in when we're done, best not push our luck."  
  
"We're going up there with the whole shebang?"  
  
"That's the plan."  
  
Amalia was silent, tying off the end of her braid before she nodded too, a slow steady exhale. "Right. Right. Don't want them to steal our shit if they've lost their income from bandits. I feel bad, I _get it_ , I know how it was when I was young now I'm older and when we show up somewhere? Probably toss around more coin in a few days than folk'll see in a month but—"  
  
"A job's a job. And we've seen what they've gotten up to in other spots. Might be the reason they've kept their mouths shut too, can't rule it out. Maybe they'd talk after but…"  
  
" _But_ can't say they'd not pucker up worse after." She exhaled explosively, braid swinging as she shook her head. "What a mess, I hate shit like this, makes me wonder which of us is the prick y'know?"  
  
"Same. Same. C'mon, let's go find the rest of 'em. Save the fire for our friends." Asher got to his feet – Yngvi's axes were good to go, blood wiped away on his trousers – and he hauled Amalia up too. "We've a little while to go over the plans again, get ourselves settled and sorted. Need to head most of the way up to stash the horses and cart before it's too dark, terrain and all that."  
  
"Right, right. And I need to change out of this. Don't know how people do it," she muttered, plucking at the loose rough spun shirt and trousers for blending in, supposedly, that less mercenary look. "Is that why they're a grumpy lot, this shit itches, gets right up the—"  
  
"Enough!" Asher laughed, giving her a shove. "I don't want to know about your unmentionables. We heard enough last night through those walls-"  
  
"As if we haven't heard worse from you Asher Hardie."  
  
A hefty smack hit Asher between the shoulders with enough heat behind it that he knew if he saw Amalia's palm, it'd be glowing faintly.  
  


* * *

  
  
Full dark had fallen long after they'd stowed the cart, hobbled both horses, eaten a cold dinner – no one wanted to risk the smoke or fire even without a wind – and rested after going over the plan a third time. They'd gone on foot as a group as far as they could towards the crumbling fortress and even in the dark, Asher could make out the stonework that decades and more of neglect, erosion and now trees growing into it had turned from a small if regal castle into a nest for the bandits they'd been sent for. One of the towers had collapsed into itself entirely, the other listing heavily to one side, most of the front exposed to what would have been a courtyard in years gone by. They had their own fire there, a bright little beacon that wouldn't give Asher, Amalia, Gunnar and Bronson much of a chance when they approached but by that point the two flanking teams should have been well on their way without much trouble.   
  
He'd been on his knees praying before they left, swung his axe, drunk mead, passed the whetstone over the blade one last time and had rolled out his shoulders, loosened himself up. He'd rubbed out Bronson's muscles and pressed their foreheads together. Man and hound, as one.  
  
Melisende and Liadan had split off already to keep eyes on the tower that might still work as a lookout spot, not that Asher could see anyone up there but he didn't see so well in the dark, not at this distance, so he trusted them to do it. Nasir and Yngvi had split off the opposite direction, hopefully creeping low and quiet through the rubble to get where close enough to start taking folk out; Yngvi had vetoed traps until he started throwing them himself once he saw it with his own eyes, something about great lumbering idiots and the dark, not needing the complaints if they stepped in one and lost a toe.  
  
Asher privately agreed but he hadn't been about to say that.  
  
"How much longer?" Amalia whispered, crouched next to him, fingers curling and uncurling.  
  
"Said to give them two minutes, almost there."  
  
"Then we walk in."  
  
"Then we walk in. Stroll up. All casual?" Gunnar asked, on the other side of Bronson who was between Asher and him, Amalia at Asher's other side.  
  
"All casual." Asher replied.  
  
"On fire." Amalia added because with Amalia that was all that tended to matter, all she ever looked forward to and it was a wonderful trait in a fight, wonderful trait in a friend, it was Amalia all over but sometimes…worrisome. Not that Asher could talk.  
  
Asher cut her a glance, still counting down in his head as he forced his hands to loosen the grip on the battle-axe. "Don't set my dog on fire."  
  
"I would never, I love him." She blew Bronson a kiss in the dark and despite what they were about to do, Asher huffed out a near-silent laugh. "Your boys I can't promise."  
  
"Singe them mildly, we don't know what they're covered in, who knows what'll happen."  
  
"That could work for us!" She whisper-shouted it and Asher strained not to laugh louder than he was allowed out here.  
  
"I'm right here!" Gunnar hissed, outraged. "Asher! I am _right here_ and you're just—"  
  
"No I'm not. Amalia," he turned to face her and she was the picture of innocence, "you can singe Yngvi, not my sweet boy Gunnar here."  
  
"You're no fun but noted. Gunnar if you walk into the fires I set, you're on your own."  
  
Gunnar might've been about to protest more but Asher counted to zero and reached out to tap them on the arms, nodding at the fortress.  
  
"Right, c'mon, time to go."   
  
There was something feral in Amalia's smile as she rose soundlessly to her feet with Asher, beginning their approach towards a camp that expected nothing, Gunnar tucking himself slightly behind them behind. People were laughing, voices carrying on the night air until they saw two people and a dog making their way towards them which did get them up and on their feet, weapons out.  
  
"All right there mates, relax, there's nothing to—" Asher called, loud enough that the others in the fortress would be able to hear him.  
  
"Fuck off, you've no business here!" One of them shouted back, sword in hand and pointed towards them.  
  
"There's no need to be rude, we're a little lost, just wanted some directions. Me, her, the dog, our young lad here – it's a dark night, this place ain't even on the map—" He thought he could spy Nasir, close behind someone and—yes. Yes he could. A hand about a throat, two figures going down without a sound.  
  
"We said—what was that?"  
  
The next figure that went down fell from the opposite tower. Landing messily with a wet crunch on the ground. Before they could turn back to the four Boneflayers behind them, the fire rose, five feet, ten feet, white-hot at the centre then it pinwheeled out around them, scattering the group who screamed; Amalia's smile lit up her face as she planted her feet, flames painting her face, reflecting in the gleaming leathers. Asher grinned back at her, lifting his battle-axe as he charged forward with Bronson at his side to lunge for the one who'd cursed at them, seventy kilos and more of scarred hound with a massive head bearing down on them to tear at their legs before the blade could come down, dropped to the ground to grab at Bronson. A mistake. He went for the throat next, tearing it open to silence them and, if Asher was asked, it was probably Bronson who really kicked everything off.  
  
There was something about a giant dog going for a person, something about a dog tearing out a jugular that just had a way of sowing the seeds of chaos and panic.  
  
Gunnar charged too, shield up to batter into the lower half of someone, sending them toppling as his blade was out. A blade coated in something terrible. Asher didn't know how the poison worked exactly, only that it left everyone bloodier than expected when the dust settled and everyone was catching their breath. And that Gunnar in this moment was a dwarf not to be messed with on any account as he savagely sliced up and into the meat of a thigh. Amalia followed it up with fire, Gunnar going for the same one Bronson had by the arm, stabbing them up and under the ribs.   
  
If it was going as well for the flanking teams as for them then this was promising to be a successful payday with minimal effort.  
  
He had it well in hand as Asher pulled deep into himself. Allowed the rage kept coiled low in the belly to unleash itself now, vicious and brutal, everything else fading into a dull roar where there was nothing else but the battle. The burning flesh from Amalia. The stonework cracking under the heat. Elsewhere he heard, distantly, the shouting, the whistling of arrows and crossbows and then something louder—  
  
Bone cleaved under a swing of his axe, blood spraying up in an arc over his face. He didn't see who he'd hit. What he'd hit. He swung again. Spun around. Spun the axe about and struck out. Metal clashed against metal and he growled, all his weight and greater height against whoever was on the receiving end until their blade slid past his, a glancing blow up the side of his arm, past the armour he didn't wear there, but his axe bit into their collarbone and down. Bit at an angle. Kept travelling. He pulled back and swung again.  
  
The arm came off. A great gout of blood and screaming following and Asher moved on. That much blood and there wasn't much else to do.   
  
Amalia sent out flames but there was a louder cacophony as Nasir came racing his way, bow drawn, arrows bloodied as he shouted something Asher didn't hear.   
  
Yngvi had obviously set up his traps. Stonework flew high in the air, plumes of dust rose. A woman limped past screaming, a cruelly modified bear trap clamped about her leg weighing her down until Bronson went for her, a crossbow bolt sticking out the back of her shoulder. Melisende and Liadan must have had good positions, not that he could see them, he could barely breathe through the dust now, and that was—he almost swung at Yngvi when he barrelled past him, the flat of an axe smacking his hip on the way in a gesture intended as friendly or playful or 'watch it mate, I'm working here' because with Yngvi you couldn't always tell before he plunged thick into the scrum.  
  
Gunnar staggered into him, a strike to the kidneys as Asher swung into the chest of the bandit who ran at them, their eyes wide in the dark as two blades cut deep, a punctured gasp escaping their bloodied mouth.   
  
And then it was over.  
  
Between the ambush, their numbers and strength, and whatever foulness coated blades and arrows alike there was a pile of bodies and all the wind out of Asher's sails as the last gurgled, head split open under his axe which he left there when his legs gave out too. The ground rushed up to meet him, hands just about catching him so he didn't fall on his side but it was a near thing if he was honest. The roaring in his ears threatened to deafen him as ever, the sweat cooling rapidly as he dropped his head between his knees to gulp in air, trying to catch his breath before the world narrowed down to a pinhole.  
  
"Sound off!" He called out in a cracked voice he hardly recognised. Had he been bellowing? Someone would say if he had. Or was it the dust in the air, the smoke from the fires burning all over now from whatever Yngvi had set off and Amalia's own work.  
  
The ragged calls went up, the two most distant coming from Melisende and Liadan who had to shout twice to be heard. Everyone present. Everyone alive.   
  
The gods had been good and kind to them, they'd won the day.  
  
There was blood in the back of his throat that wasn't his own; Asher rose on unsteady legs, looking about the slaughter to Bronson who damn near knocked him on his arse, muzzle bloodied which of course warranted a good inspection or as good as he could make it with eyes that didn't seem to want to focus on anything in particular now, but his hands still knew how to search out a wound, how to listen for any whinging or howls, and none were forthcoming, only a great huge lump of a dog leaning all that bulk on him until Asher was left with little choice but to go down with him. Not that he minded. It was as comforting as it was comfortable.  
  
He didn't know how long they were both lying there, his bloodied hands stroking through soft fawn fur but a boot nudged his shoulder.  
  
"We're going to start searching them and here for anything worthwhile, you in?"  
  
He tipped his head back, Liadan's upside down face looming over him with barely a hair out of place. Of course she'd been out of the way for all of it. High in a tower that they'd found. That was how those two did things, some sort of thieves luck probably or some strange shared sense only the who handled the coin had that Asher didn't argue with. "Right, yep, I'm up. Coming. Bronson let me up here's a good lad."  
  
With a grumble, Asher got Bronson up and off him, forcing himself up too with the helping hand Liadan offered, noting the way she wiped the blood off. No curl of the lip though she did pull a face at him. "You stink, Nasir better know a river near to dump you in 'cause I'm not riding by night in any cart with you in that state."  
  
"You talking to me or the dog?"  
  
"I was talking to you but he'll need a scrub too, how d'you manage to get so filthy?"  
  
"S'not his fault he fights with his mouth."  
  
"That's fine." They kept walking up over unsteady ground, mindful of traps that had been hurled that Yngvi hadn't seen to gathering up yet, not when there were more pressing things to be going through. "Don't know what your excuse is."  
  
"Up close and personal is dirty work."  
  
"Nasir's not caked in it. _Yngvi's_ not caked in it." She grabbed Asher's arm when he tripped on a step that cracked under his weight, both of them cursing. "He's caked in something, mind, but it's not blood."  
  
Asher waved the words off, following her through the ruins, past a pile of bodies that had been dragged from where they'd been felled, probably all the way out to the rest but they moved past them. Melisende, Nasir, Yngvi, and Gunnar were back and forth ferrying them from the looks of it, Amalia tending to the flames. The stink of burning flesh was filling the air but they'd kept the horses away from it. Not that they weren't used to it but no sense to subject them to that or risk spooking them, not when they'd be trying to urge them on while it was still dark to get some distance between here and the village they'd stayed in before word got out.   
  
"Reckon there's much of a stash?" Asher asked as Liadan lead him to what had served as sleeping quarters. It was a sad affair: the roof would've been leaking when it rained, the mattresses – such as they were – gave off the rising stink of rotting turnips and damp, but it'd be worth a look.   
  
"Who cares, we'll take whatever they've got if we can carry it. Sell it off if we can even for scrap."  
  
"So why am I here and not someone else?"  
  
"Heavy lifting, it's all you're good for." She slapped him on the arm as she went for the small tables by the beds, Yngvi's voice filtering their way, hopefully to pick up the traps before someone else had to. "See to that crate there will you?"  
  
"Right."  
  
It was the usual sort of wrap-up work from a job, a crate that didn't boast much more than their perishables but it was all food that they could use and when Asher hoisted it speculatively, it didn't weigh too much, something he could heave right up on one shoulder to take straight out the door. His shoulder strained with it – the fight had worn off now, sweat cooling on his skin – and he took the direct path out, looking straight ahead for the stairs until a voice called out to him.  
  
"Oi, mind yourself!"   
  
Backing up, he glanced down to spy Yngvi who was crouched in front of a trap, tools in his mouth. "Shift yourself." Gently even though it unbalanced him, he nudged the dwarf in the shoulder with his foot. Or lightly brushed. Given his burden. And the trap with sharp teeth that Yngvi's fingers were hovering over. "I'm working here."  
  
"You're working here? _I'm_ working here! You're the pack horse today." There was a heavy clank and a snap, the trap deactivated again, scooped up into the dwarf's hands as he grabbed Asher's arm to hoist himself up, ignoring the complaints. "Anything good in there?"  
  
"Not for rude children to know."  
  
"Piss off, what's in the box?"  
  
"Dinner, probably. Some real vegetables and everything."  
  
" _Nice_ , so Amalia was right on the money after all. Gunnar! Gunnar!" Shouting past Asher as he continued past the dwarf, past the pile of bodies being stacked and the valuables that had been separated from them. "You owe Amalia coin, she was right!"  
  
Nasir snorted, a small pile of weapons bound over his shoulder as he jogged up to Asher on the way to the cart. "We're almost ready to go on our end, what about you?"  
  
"Liadan's still rummaging, I thought I'd bring this and get it out the way. You lot find much?"  
  
"Bit of coin, took the weapons to sell off the next place we stop off, might have found some gems or something but we need to find someone who'll be able to check them but I don't know who'd be able to check them. Might be a bit before we find someone who can do that."   
  
"Guessing Amalia's…dealing with the bodies."  
  
"…Yeah."  
  
"Have everyone finish up and meet back here soon as, there's food in here so if anyone's wanting dinner we can have it here." Asher took a breath, thick with rancid burning flesh and shook his head, dumping the crate in the cart as Nasir did the same with the weapons. "Maybe we'll get a bit of a start on the road. Sorry for the smell, thought the wind would stay." He patted the horses who barely looked up from their grazing, tails flicking lazily.  
  
They were old hands at this, what did they care for the smell of burning flesh when they had to smell far worse up close and personal?  
  


* * *

  
  
"Dead man stew is the best," Yngvi declared from halfway under the cart, sopping it up with a biscuit he'd produced from a place Asher was better off not asking about. He'd learnt that the hard way.  
  
"Stop calling it dead man stew," Melisende muttered, looking mildly disturbed that she even had to tell him something like that.  
  
"What else do you call stew you make from dead man's stuff?" Gunnar asked, his bowl held up to his chin as he asked the question, the picture of innocence alongside his brother that made it difficult to tell if he was telling the truth or not.   
  
"Is this a Belnesse thing?" Melisende asked, looking at Liadan who was stretching her shoulders out, something about crossbows and recoil and she'd probably get someone else to massage them later.   
  
"I'm not something Asher scooped out of a gutter," Liadan pointed out and all eyes swung his way. Of course as he was trying to comb out his beard best he could in the dark without aid of a mirror so nothing dried into a hard and disgusting mess that'd smell before the morning. "Anyway, you two lived in Belnesse how long?"  
  
"It's a different thing, right Asher?"  
  
"Just a man sorting his beard here, leave me out of it."  
  
"Asher almost steps on me and now this," Yngvi complained, tossing his bowl into the bucket with a resounding splash that earned him a thump from whoever ended up soaked from it. "Talking right over the top of dwarven lives here – can you believe this brother?"  
  
"Tragic. I mean we're both here and you're asking Asher things?"  
  
" _Yngvi, Gunnar_." Nasir cut in, all smiles as he swung himself down between them both, an arm around each one and his beer almost sloshing over Yngvi's shoulder though Asher noticed he didn't seem to pay too much heed to that. "Tell me of dead man stew. Or is it dead man's stew? Who possesses it?"  
  
"I'm going to bed," Amalia declared, rising swiftly to her feet. "I fought, I roasted some bastards who deserved it, I ate well and I'm not going to lose it hearing about the filth they shovel down in the pit."  
  
"It's not a _pit_ ," Yngvi started, grabbing for Nasir's beer but it was out of reach.  
  
"It's the undercity and well you know it," Gunnar finished, passing Yngvi his beer across Nasir. "Night Amalia."  
  
The chorus of good nights followed, Amalia kissing Bronson on the head where the hound was stretched out next to the fire, scratching him until his back leg shook before she disappeared into her and Nasir's tent, the flap most of the way shut. The night air was close this time of year, bordering on stuffy in the thick cover of the trees with a late night meal in them. A good night, Asher thought, beard finally dealt with to the best of his ability as he reached for the mead, a long swig thrown back before he tossed it Melisende's way when she snapped her fingers. Nasir and his boys were busy debating who ultimately possessed a dead man's stew, a conversation Asher might have cared for under other circumstances, a debate growing more and more lively as the beers were traded between the three of them, Yngvi's cheeks flushed and pink as he snort-laughed. Liadan eventually rose to her feet, waving the rest of them off as she headed to a tent too, yawning as she rolled her shoulder.  
  
"I'll get Amalia to lay hands on you in the morning!" Nasir called, just loud enough for it to carry across the camp without it waking Amalia.  
  
"Cheers, I'll owe her."  
  
"I'll take watch," Melisende offered, startling Asher out of his daze when she came to sit next to him, passing the mead back. "Means I can sleep in the cart for part of the morning."  
  
"I don't mind staying up with you honestly, been a while since we've had the chance. Lads," he waited for the dwarves to look over his way, "if you want to head to bed we'll get watch, Liadan should rest that shoulder from the look of it, decide amongst yourselves before it's time for packing up who'll be driving and sorting the horses."  
  
"Right-o! So there's a whole thing with rats—" Yngvi continued, head bent towards Nasir and the dining etiquette and ownership politics of the undercity.  
  
"You have such terrible boys," Melisende told him with a smile, head resting heavily on his shoulder as she flipped a dagger in her hand.   
  
"Yeah, they're grand, wouldn't trade them for the world." He knew his smile was fond, exhaustion and drink turning him soppier than usual as he looked their way, chin propped up on one hand to the tangle of limbs against the side of the cart. "We make it all right from this?"  
  
Melisende sighed, long and slow, not that there was any real rush. "Decent pay-out for this once we get back. Got ourselves some things we weren't expecting. I think so, once we've slept and Liadan's rested up then we'll do the sums. Check inventory with Yngvi too."  
  
"Know where we're headed next?"  
  
"That's your job boss."  
  
"Fuck off with that." He shoved her lightly, both of them laughing softly so as not to wake the sleepers in their tents as they waved Nasir off too. "We all get a say and it's late, I'm knackered."  
  
"Belnesse. We're going back to Belnesse. Check in with folks, see how things are, let Liadan and the boys see some family and all that."  
  
"Sounds like a plan. Good place to pick up new jobs too."  
  
"That's what Liadan and I were thinking; we're not hurting for coin but it never hurts to have it. You wanting to head back home?"  
  
"Nah, not in a rush." It was a lie. Or close to it, at least late at night when part of him did long for the mountains, for those he held close and dear. "It'll keep 'til we've more reason to go freezing our nethers off."  
  
"Noted. Now," she groaned, rising to her feet for her weapons and his. "Help me stay awake; I want to have a bloody good sleep in the cart tomorrow and no one catching me nodding off before dawn."


	3. Chapter 3

Belnesse reeked.

Belnesse had, in Asher's opinion, always reeked, and that was just the way of it. A distinctive foul blend all its own coming from all its numerous industries, a place that had somehow managed to worm its way into becoming home for the Boneflayers. It was where the Boneflayers had been born after all, no place more worthy of such an honour than Belnesse when he and Melisende had set foot off the boat when leaving their previous company behind with grand designs. (Or that was Asher's recollection of it, he was almost certain that Melisende would hold less charitable thoughts even now when it had all worked out so well for them both, for everyone who'd become one of them.) This was where you could find whatever you were looking for even if you didn't look particularly hard. It always tended to find you in Belnesse. 

Asher hoped it'd be the same now they were back for the first time in several years, wiping the damp from the morning fog off him as they disembarked the ferry from the main ship that had seen them here, the previous job behind them, new coin in their pockets, goods to be selling off at the markets; no one in Belnesse would go about asking questions when it came to their origin and Liadan was sure she'd be able to find buyers and valuers and everything else they required for what they'd taken from the bodies.

"Good to be home boys?" He asked as Yngvi and Gunnar helped to shoulder some of their supplies down to the cart and a waiting Nasir who, as ever, had arrived ahead. Well-rested by the looks of him too, the bastard.

Not that Asher would ever voice that, it was a thankless task to travel off on your own, Nasir was one of the people who made it _look_ easy, who shrugged it off, skilled as he was. But it was hard work, no mistake, arranging all that needed to be done even for a homecoming.

"Asher," Yngvi said seriously as he heaved his satchel up into the cart, leaning against it all the better to stare up at Asher with disinterest. "This isn't our home. You know that we come from the gutter. Brother can you believe that he doesn't even remember that?"

"Terrible. A crime. Don't throw this bag or I'll shave your head." Gunnar handed his satchel to Yngvi who set it down with exaggerated care, dusting it off. Asher suspected he only succeeded in smearing dirt over the leather. It was a wonder Yngvi hadn't lost any fingers between the dirt, the grime, and the ever-present cuts and scrapes there. Or having an alchemist for a brother. Or it was a Belnesse thing. Plenty of things were just Belnesse things as the three natives of the company took delight in reminding the rest of them whenever the opportunity presented itself.

"What are we to you after all these years that you could forget where you found us, scooped us up and out, gave us our good names!"

"I'll toss you back there Yngvi if you're not careful. Gunnar you're good, you don't talk so much I need to worry about your jaw falling off."

"Wouldn't that be handy for us?" Liadan, sat in the cart to listen to the whole exchange thus far grinned savagely. "I have faith in Gunnar's skills that he could do something for Yngvi to keep him around with only the top half of the jaw."

"Think of the slobber," Asher shuddered as Yngvi started sputtering.

"The slobber? Me? Look at that animal!"

"How dare you impugn the honour of my hound!" Bronson lifted his head from Melisende's lap as Asher gestured then dropped it again, uninterested in it. Evidently all the more reason for Asher to defend it vigorously.

"I'm not doing that if I'm just saying that when he eats or drinks or smells anything he takes a fancy to that it's dangerous. Rivers have flooded and burst their banks with less risk than Bronson spotting your breakfast."

"I'm not even going to dignify that with a response, get in the cart."

Hoisting him up and Gunnar too, Asher made his way up to the front, eager to take in the scenery while Amalia and Melisende lounged in the back with everything they carried with them to be traded or sold before they settled in. It'd been too long since they'd entrenched themselves and that was what he _did_ enjoy about Belnesse compared to most other places they worked: it didn't pretend to be anything other than what it was, and what it was happened to be a shithole and that was if you were being polite about it. Belnesse could call itself a city state as loudly and for as long as it liked but the criminal element had well and truly entrenched themselves here and short of setting the whole place on fire then sinking whatever remained for good measure, there'd be no getting rid of them.

Even then Asher was sure that element would survive and lead the rebuilding. 

But that suited Asher and that suited the Boneflayers because as long as all of them and that lot were alive? That meant there was work for them, coin for their pouches and pockets, and with a click of the tongue and flick of the reins they were on the way to what had been their base of operations in the earliest years and Asher couldn't be happier.

"Can you believe we still have the same digs as we did previous?" Asher asked Nasir, daring a glance over his shoulder into the back where the rest hadn't bothered to do much by way of making themselves comfortable. What would be the point? Belnesse was large for a city state but she was a city nonetheless, they'd be where they needed to be shortly. 

"Asher," Nasir set a friendly hand on his shoulder before he stretched his arms above his head then settled, elbows hooked over the back of the seat, head tipped up towards a slate grey sky that promised neither rain nor sun, "it's a hovel. A comfortable hovel where we're not tripping over one another but we've all set eyes on enough to know them. Actually—" He twisted about sharply then, whistling to get the attention of those behind them and it spooked one of their horses, Asher fighting to get it back under control before the second took note.

"Warn a man!" He groused, not daring to glance over if they'd ended up with such a flighty city-shy animal this time.

"You're a big lad, anyway it's not about you so do your job, I've news: Liadan, your parents want to see you soon as, nothing bad just been a while since they set eyes on you, I said we'd have them round for dinner since it seemed a mite presumptuous for all of us to just pile in at theirs."

"Cheers Nasir, probably haven't been writing as much as I should." Asher didn't have to turn to know Liadan was chewing her lip. He felt the same when he hadn't written to Aura or up to the hold but that was how time passed when you were on the road. A succession of jobs rather than days, time stretching out or blurring together until you lost track of it all together, letters that stacked up in your pack for lack of a place to send them or a courier who'd get them where they were meant to go. "Yngvi you're coming to the market with me once we've dumped our gear."

"How come I'm coming with you? Why am I volunteered for this?"

"Everyone in the market knows your face. Handsome dirty face that it is."

"They know his face—"

"Kick me again," Gunnar warned, sounding half-asleep, "and I'll kick you out and you can walk."

"Because it's the same face with a little less lustre," Yngvi continued as if he hadn't heard Gunnar's interruption or didn't care. Knowing Yngvi it was six of one, half dozen of the other.

"That what we're calling a week's worth of grime is it? Lustre? Need to remember that one, anyway, Gunnar trades decently," Liadan pointed out, Asher listening intently while he drew the cart to a halt to allow for another to cross the street in front of him. "You on the other hand are outrageous about it, they want to put some meat on your bones so they don't charge as much since they think you can't feed yourself, or you never shut up so they drop the price to get rid of you."

"I—I—Asher am I to listen to this slander?" Yngvi had moved, clambering over bodies, goods, and gear to wedge himself between Asher and Nasir, to make sure his grievance was well-noticed. 

"I want everyone to know how much I love them," Asher said flatly as he possibly could before he took one hand from the reins to cover Yngvi's face, pushing him back and down into the cart again without looking, Nasir roaring with laughter the whole time.

Eventually with Yngvi's muttering complaints about the great injustices that compromised his life a constant background drone, they came to a halt outside what had been the first – and only – headquarters of the Boneflayers. Officially at least, you tended to have others held in the heart but never said aloud. Or that was how Asher thought of them and he couldn't just go saying them or it'd ruin the principle of the thing and then they'd never be able to use convenient spots ever again. An unassuming place, it wasn't far from being a hovel as Nasir had described though the size of the place was probably far beyond what most who lived in Belnesse's multiple hovels could ever dream of. A converted warehouse where enough deals had fallen through that Asher and Melisende had gotten it 'for a steal' the owner had insisted at the time though it never felt like it. Even now it didn't. 

"Doesn't look like the rats moved in since we were last here," Melisende noted as she made her way in on the first trip to the main room that had been stripped empty walls once upon a time. Not that they were much improved now but they'd tried to turn it into a space you'd want to live in. Sectioned spaces off. 

After all they had the floors for it to have their own rooms, a real bathroom, a kitchen, just more open plan than other places they sometimes stayed in at the expense of employers. A few rooms had doorframes for instance but they'd never bothered themselves to replace the missing doors, sheets or tarps or whatever else they could grab standing in if something like a door was needed. Camping out in the open and tentflaps were more familiar anyway.

"They know they'd be in the cooking pot." Gunnar was next in, him and Yngvi with their packs on and a crate between them. He must've noticed the look on Asher's face when he said it. "What? There's good eating on rats you know that, we can't all be beef boys."

"The prime cuts Asher got when he was little; d'you remember, Gunnar? When a bird day was a good day?"

"I do, Yngvi, I do. Liadan?" They set their crate down with a grunt, struggling out of their packs to scoot them by the door as she set her weapons on the long scarred table that had been witness to a great many sins, waiting for her noise of 'I'm listening'. "What was a good day for you in your house? Not thief stuff but growing up?"

"Fish day. Had to get it fresh or you'd be leaking, not just sick, you'd leak."

Asher shook his head as they all laughed. 

"Do we get fish for your parents?" Melisende's voice came from behind a hulking sack that Asher took from her, hoisted up on his shoulder to dump in a corner of the room out the way.

"What's in this?" He asked of the room in general only to be ignored.

"Would you serve fish to your parents?" Nasir asked in return to Melisende, not Asher, genuinely interested. "I mean I had the opposite problem honestly. All the fish I could eat but if you could get a rat you were onto a good thing weren't you?"

"You think I saw a fish, sweet boy." Melisende cupped his cheek with an audible slap, and down he went, clutching his chest. "I never saw a fish 'til I was out of Aubin."

(Asher didn't know if she was lying or not. He _desperately_ wanted to.)

"We'll need to see what they've got in the market." Liadan cut over the conversation as she booted the door shut behind her, a sign that everything was in at last, only the horse and cart to be dealt with. "And what this sweet boy with his sweet face and sweet mouth get me."

She had a hold of Yngvi's cheek, the lightning fast viper strike of a thief as he squawked but how could anyone escape that?

"Get off me! Beast! _Beast_!" Yngvi squawked at her, hands smacking ineffectually since his cheek was on the line. "Oi, Bronson, get in here and defend me!"

Bronson opened an eye and yawned. Amalia dragged a chair noisily out from the table, hurled a lazy blast at the fireplace and slumped into the seat to stretch out across it.

"Asher," she whined or tried to. It was muffled from her face being pressed directly into the table where she hadn't bothered to lift it. "Can you take them off to get food? If I have to eat more shit rations now we're here I'll get angry. No one wants that. Least of all the hairiest."

"You wouldn't do that to Bronson."

"You're hairier than Bronson."

"That's low."

"That's where all your hair is."

Asher stared blankly at the back of her head for a long moment, turned on his heel, and walked back out the door without looking to see if anyone followed him.

* * *

"So Nasir's banned from buying horses for a bit, right?" 

Yngvi's question was almost a formality as they took the cart into the main market as far as they could and drew it to a halt, coins tossed to the stable hands loitering. Liadan clambered down first to give them the what for because she knew best or she probably still got the rates she used to, even as a non-member. 

"Asher." Yngvi poked his shoulder.

"He'll be sitting up front, facing the horses' arses." Asher muttered, hopping down. He held out a hand to Yngvi to help him down, standing clear from the horses with a dark look. "Don't know what he fed those things, that was _foul_."

"It was _loud_! Everyone was looking at our farting horses." Stepping past Asher, Yngvi tugged the horses down to be nose to nose with them. "You are an embarrassment. Both of you. Oi, look at me, don't you’re your eyes to the side that doesn't work on me. D'you know who we are?"

"Probably and you're lucky they didn't leak," Liadan teased, hauling Yngvi away.

Asher pulled a face at them both, unable to suppress a shudder. "What is it with you and _leaking_? I can't talk about it now, that's just—"

"Well it's true, Asher, I'm sorry you don't leak out in the farmlands," Yngvi said solemnly, a small hand on Asher's arm that he thought about shrugging off then didn't. 

"You know we've got shit water. Literal shit water."

Liadan turned to look at them both, skirting around a small girl racing down the street without a care. "So do we, you're not special."

"Nah, you've not seen what happens when it goes wrong with where the animals shit and where the drinking water is, you don't really do farming in Belnesse, do you? Because what happens after is that the _people_ shit--"

"No no no! Farming," Yngvi said after a long moment of silence from them as Belnesse's market bustled about them, faintly horrified, both arms flapping, "is fucking disgusting."

"That it is. Anyway, go get whatever you're getting, I've got a few things to pick up and we'll meet back at the cart. Sooner the better before Amalia sets the place on fire or stages a mutiny."

As soon as Liadan and Yngvi disappeared from view, Asher took a turn to head for one of the last places they might have looked for him, taking a well-folded letter from a pocket to read it once again. Not that he needed to. He knew exactly what it said. Not that he'd be telling the Boneflayers that he'd dragged them all the way to Belnesse just so he could see one person. There was always work here and re-establishing their presence, their connections, making sure no one forget their faces. Yes, Liadan's family were here. Yngvi and Gunnar's too though they weren't so keen on reunions. They'd maybe not question it but if they did—

Well he'd rather not have it come to that if he could help it.

Pushing open a door he thought he recognised with a self-conscious look about, he allowed the smell of stale smoke to wash over him as he stepped inside. The tavern was dark, a tiny old place folded between a bookshop and a what had once been a clothes shop but had gone out of business since he'd last come through. The sort of place catering to a more specific clientele, especially at this time of the day. A tired tattooed elven woman tended the bar, tight corkscrewed grey curls, dark skin and blooms of stark red blossoms at her shoulders who looked up from her book at his arrival.

"What'll it be?"

"I'm looking for someone but mead if you have it?"

" If it's mead from where you hail from if I'm any judge then I should have some but it'll cost you extra."

"Worth it." He set the coin down on the counter as he took a look around for who he expected to see, neither hope nor dread winning out. He played with the coins until a rough hand uncurled his fingers from around them with confidence, sliding them across the wood of the bar and into her hand. The glass was passed his way. "Cheers."

The woman nodded, wiped the bar absently, then returned to her book. Asher was nothing to her, just another face so he turned to give her peace that he'd interrupted. 

"Asher." A soft voice called and his blood froze before he'd even turned all the way from the bar. "Asher here, come, sit with me Asher."

"Perdita."

Her name came out on a sigh, the edge of reluctance in him to say it. 

There, from her cushioned booth faded by years of neglect, patched, stitched, stained, sat Perdita draped in long dark scarf that she'd wrapped about her several times, hair tucked inside it, the silver embroidery unravelling in places but still catching the light that filtered in through dusty windows. Her hands reached across the tables for his, long painted nails that had caught on several years ago in certain circles that didn't quite prick his skin but had him flinching as if they had, Perdita straightening up to shake her mane of thick dark hair from her pale face in a long fluid motion. 

"You're looking well Perdita." He raised his glass, barely wetting his lips as she smiled at him. 

Instead of replying, she held out her cards, the ritual familiar to him as it had ever been. Still it didn't quell the sweat that chilled him, the bile rushing up the back of his throat that forced him to set the glass down heavily. "There isn't time for any of this, you know it."

"Right. Right."

She watched him. He lifted the mead to wash the acrid taste from his mouth, a breath hissing in through his teeth afterwards but instead of reaching for the cards he dragged a hand down through his beard. A beetle crept from Perdita's sleeve, a glossy lacquered shell she might have painted to match her nails. Asher didn't know beetles well. Perdita went places he didn't. Travelled in circles unknown to him. He held out his hand to allow it to scuttle into his palm, tiny legs, tinier feet finding purchase to travel over his fingers up and onto the back of his palm until it lost interest somewhere close to his cuff, about turning to head back to Perdita, back up her sleeve again. The touch of it was so light that he wasn't sure if it was real or not, rubbing at his palm until Perdita caught his attention again, stopping him in the act.

"The cards."

"Can't just take a seat after a long journey, can't just have a chat, take a drink—"

"We haven't the time. _You_ haven't the time for such things, not when you'll be away after this and you've left it this late already."

"You seem confident about that, we just _got_ here, we've jobs to do."

"There are places more profitable than Belnesse," she smiled at him, old and young in a way that made him uncomfortable; Perdita had a way of looking like his youngest sister and his grandmother at the same time, and he shook his head without needing to. "You'll be called away before long."

"Beetles tell you that?"

"A man beloved to you high upon a mountain listens to birds, Asher Hardie, do you mock him?" Her hands came down on the table, palms slapping the wood hard enough to have him jump, cracking a knee on the underside with a bitten-off curse. He held up a hand to placate her. "The cards."

Throwing back the mead with watering eyes, Asher did as he was told without further complaint from him or lecture from her, not looking up at Perdita and her heavy-lidded eyes either. She always tended to drink spirits that had the aroma of perfume about them rather than alcohol, smoked things he'd peg for incense that had the eyes burning if establishments allowed, that she wasn't doing it now—he slid the cards back to her in three piles, watching her long, pale fingers, the flash of her silver rings, the unpolished cut stones in them that blinked up at him. Was it too early in the day for her? Or was it something else he simply didn't want to think about?

There were beetles that crept from her sleeves, a whole host of them in a riot of colours, shapes, and sizes, all of them shining bright enough that it hurt Asher's eyes to look at them even as he struggled not to squirm in his seat to get away or to itch and scratch at the sight. Once – and only once – he'd asked Perdita where they'd come from.

He'd never asked her again.

Over the cards they crept, shifting patterns as she held her hands low enough to allow them to pass beneath. When he looked, he thought her eyes were closed. As if in prayer. Or meditation. Even some sort of spellcasting. Difficult to know with her or this but this was the edge of brazen in a place where even with the clientele who were the trifecta of rich, powerful, and bored enough to dabble in that sort of thing could get away with it, the Order would easily take exception to Perdita's practices. Yet she'd ever remained out of their clutches unlike so many other unhappy cases.

"You'll see her soon," Perdita said abruptly, lifting a goliath beetle out of the way to reveal the card of the veiled woman with a closed book. "Please give my regards to Morgaine when you see her, won't you?"

"You going to tell me what that one means?"

"How long have you know Morgaine Bonheur?"

"Right, right. Go on." It wasn't as if he hadn't seen the card before but it had been years since she'd last explained it to him. That it was tied so tight to Morgaine, that the two of them had to know one another wasn't lost on him but to push at Perdita wasn't something he could bring himself to do. She probably wouldn't tell him anything he wanted to know anyway. She'd just wave a hand. Smile in that way that got under his skin or fob him off with some vague bullshit.

The next card she turned over was one she tapped a painted nail on several times to draw his attention to it. "Listen to this one: an old man, he's in a dark place, he is alone."

"Not that dark, look at him there with his light—" There was more on the tip of his tongue until Perdita's hand flashed out to grab one of his and pinch it. Her nails weren't as sharp as their length suggested but they were hard and he winced, tugging his hand back. "Fuck's sake, right, sorry, continue."

"I already know what that third card is but this is one you should heed: you need the wisdom of this card, there are things you have to settle with yourself. Honesty, Asher Hardie, honesty with those about you but honesty with yourself." Her smile when she finished wasn't kind. It rarely was when she gave him a reading. "Oh look at this last one Asher, why don't you hold it?"

_Why don't you fuck the fuck off?_ He longed to say and from the _look_ she shot him, two parts amusement to one part venom, somehow he was sure that she knew what he'd thought her direction. 

"A young man who walks close to the edge of a cliff without knowing – look, he even has a hound so faithful as your Bronson at his heels. He has a white rose in his hands," she set the card down, swept them up into the pile they'd been in upon arrival and away into the folds of her scarf before she rested her elbows on the table, hair falling forward to frame her face. "This card is a between place, such luck that you rely on, the grotesque – you can draw your own conclusions there – but I wonder…"

And then something happened that Asher hadn't seen when they'd done this all the many times since he'd sat across from her, half-drunk with a broken nose in a backwater tavern in a village without a name ( _not unlike where you just came from_ he thought to himself), blood staining his teeth when she'd asked who'd like a reading ( _only without the broken nose, blood on your hands not in your mouth_ , his thought continued, unabated. He should have had a drink before he sat down). Her head jerked sharply left then right then back, her eyes rolling all the way back to show only the whites and thin red veins, hands slamming down sharply to grip the edges of the table as beetles crept out of her scarf in too many places for comfort, even from under her hair. Asher risked a glance to the woman at the bar: still bored, not even looking over at them.

" _Perdita_ ," he hissed urgently, reaching a hand out towards one of hers where he could see how white the knuckles had turned.

Her head rolled forward with a whispering rustle of her hair covering her face entirely; Asher unsure what he was supposed to do here but before he could round the table, there was a hand grabbing at his, anchoring him half-out of his seat.

"He speaks with the voice of the gods or he will be an idiot who hides his own powers." Perdita's voice was half her own but it echoed strangely, a humming chorus of chirping and clicking behind her, of buzzing and thrumming, insect sounds that had him swallowing wetly as she kept speaking, her other hand scrabbling as her head rolled. "There is a journey. Expect what you cannot—"

Then the spell was broken as she coughed and sputtered, Asher half-expecting an enormous beetle to be forced up and out of her throat but there was nothing, just her grip slackening enough that he was able to stumble over his feet to get away to the bar.

"Everything all right over there?" The bartender hadn't looked up from her book, the faintest of concern in her voice.

"Yeah just a bit of a funny turn, nothing a little wine won't fix," he forced the cheer into his voice, aware that it fell a country mile short but that was what coin was for, glad that the place was damn near empty now but for old timers or the institutions of the place who wouldn't give a damn about either of them as he took the drink back with him. There were eyes on him on the way.

"C'mon Perdita, drink up, drink up, that's the way." He was rambling as he got the glass into her hand, shooing away whatever beetles tried to get close – they were real, they had to be, how else would he be seeing them and her too the way she carried on? - to it as her fingers curled, one pupil larger than the other, less the glassy eyes of the drunkard and more the eyes of someone who'd been beaten about the head. Asher knew that look from his own face in reflections from weapons or the next day, the look on a foe's face. 

"Sorry Asher I don't know what—sorry that was—" Her hands shook around the glass so Asher cupped his tighter about them to keep from making a mess, a tremor in her voice that she tried to laugh off. "I think, perhaps, there's too much excitement buzzing about you for one day. I should go lie down upstairs now, yes, I think a lie down is what I need. So sorry to cut this short.

"Don't be silly Perdita, just gave me a bit of a scare y'know, can't go doing that to a man in my line of work. So long as you're all right?" He ducked his head better to get a look at her eyes. What he saw there satisfied him, at least, but it was a long way from making him happy.

"Of course, of course," she waved a hand slipped out from under his, breezily patting his cheek. "The owner and I have a long-standing relationship; she'll take good care of me. Go, the day is yours. See me before you leave Belnesse?"

"Promise. Won't be for a good while yet. Take care of yourself." He set the glass down for her, cupping her hands in his to bring them up to his forehead just to make her myself.

"Take care of you and yours. Now," she tapped his forehead with her nails, beetle wings buzzing noisily. " _Go_!"

He slid out of his seat with an uneasy smile, glancing over his shoulder so he could wave at her on the way out the door. Best to shake it off. They were only words. Just words. But if it was augur saying it? If it was Gjurd not whatever Perdita was. It all could wait, Liadan and Yngvi were out there in the market, the grand haggling double act of Belnesse a treat not to be missed after this long and he headed out the door, loping through the streets with the hopes of out of sight, out of mind.

* * *

"Asher!"

Still half in a daze, legs moving without his mind to supply a real direction with no clue as to how long had passed since he'd left Perdita's company, Yngvi's voice cut through the fog. He couldn't see him yet but that was hardly a surprise; dwarves seldom stood out in crowds unless they were the more garishly dressed wealthy crowd, at least in a place like Belnesse. Yngvi most certainly wasn't one of them. Liadan wasn't in sight either but again, she could blend into the crowd too so he waded through it, unsurprised that it parted easily for a man of his size, or for a man dressed as he was with a beard in need of a trim, the braided and shaved hair that came from the mountains, in what passed for armour at least for this crowd. By the time he found Yngvi after his name being shouted a few more times, insults peppered in for flavour, he glanced up to see the sign for a bookshop.

It was a long way to look back down at Yngvi. He took his sweet time doing it too.

"What?" Immediately Yngvi's shoulders rounded, face screwed up. "I'm the one what helps keep books, they teach us reading. More of your lot don't even know the letters of their names than mine."

"True, true," Asher wasn't going to argue with him there; if his mother hadn't been his mother and his father hadn't been from a city prior to the country he might well have been one of them, "but this is a book shop and I'm wondering why you're hollering for me here."

"I found something."

"You were meant to be finding food. Selling off shit and all that."

"We found the food, Liadan's sorted it, got some strapping boys to go help her since you pissed off—"

"I had things to attend to." Asher aimed for lofty and fell short. Fell down a bloody ravine.

Yngvi, fortunately as evidenced by him bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet setting the contents of his pockets that Asher rarely wanted to know about to jingling, didn't notice in the slightest. "Well good for you mate, missed me flattering warty old women trying to marry me off to whatever relations they've got—anyway, she said to go have fun before it was time to look for you so I came here, y'know, bit of _literature_ for the road." 

No one managed to both drag out and mangle words the way Yngvi did. Asher lost track of the syllables in literature the way it came out of a Belnesse clan dwarf's mouth. Combined with the glint in his eyes, the way he leaned all the way into Asher's space, and the wink that he purposefully screwed his whole face up for because Asher knew the little shit could wink, he was already smiling as his stomach dropped down somewhere in the direction of his arse.

"I'm terrified, what in the name of the gods have you found in there."

"Come in, come with your good friend Yngvi." Yngvi patted his arm, pushing the door open with his hand so the bell above jingled invitingly and Asher had no choice but to follow, to invite whatever was to come into his life. "Now, cast your mind back Asher Hardie to a few years back and to one of our many jobs for the idle nobility of Aubin. To those good chums of the Pelletiers we did a thing for, I think Valeriane came along for something and there was _that young lady_."

Asher chanced a look down to Yngvi who grinned up at him wickedly, leading him through the untidy shelves. It was an old shop, musty, motes of dust catching the light that filtered through the dirty windows, few candles or lamps likely on account of the many books cluttering the place. They were heading further back than Asher was comfortable with, the blood steadily draining from his face, a cold sweat beading on his upper lip as Yngvi just kept talking.

"D'you remember her, Asher? The one what fancied herself not just a writer but, what was it again?" Yngvi tapped his dirty fingers – one of them still missing a nasty chunk from a recent trap making accident – to his lips as if deep in thought. "An artist of the word, an ink mistress of storytelling. Do you remember her Asher?"

" _Yes_ ," Asher growled, amazed that his cheeks could still flush as another patron shot them a dirty look. He unclenched fingers he couldn't remember clenching and tried to slow his breathing. "Why are we here you prick?"

Yngvi smacked his thigh with the back of one hand. "Don't curse in front of the books you ingrate, you country beef boys—"

"Enough with the beef boy—"

"Makes you sensitive it does, same as the friends of the young lady, remember them running off clutching their bellies? _Oh, my stomach_!"

"I'm about to drop a shelf on top of you and go home, get to the point if there is one."

"You're no fun today, what's got your balls in a bunch? Fine, fine. You made a big impression on her, you and your _unrestrained wild ways_."

" _No._ " Asher stopped short, grabbed Yngvi by the shoulder and dropped to his level as the reality of the situation hit him, the floor pitching as he tried to steady himself with a hand on the nearest shelf. "No. No Yngvi tell me something else. Anything else."

"I'd love to, Asher, I really would. But, well, stay here, I'll fetch it; I don't know where all your blood ran off to." Yngvi scarpered, boots somehow not thundering but that was Yngvi and Asher had long ago tried to give up questioning him, concentrating on his breathing instead, on trying not to sink down onto the floor until the dwarf returned with not one but several volumes. Not inconsiderable volumes. Unmistakeable bodice rippers. 

"That's me." Asher could hear his voice but it sounded far away through the ringing in his ears. It wasn't shame that hit him, he didn't think he had anything to be ashamed of here, but it was a rare thing to be genuinely shocked by what he held in his hands as his eyes skimmed the covers that did indeed depict a man that looked a great deal like him only more savage, hairier, more bearded and unkempt. A man who bathed even less than he had the chance to. 

The young lady in question was the other star with words on the cover and back that his eyes couldn't focus on.

"I'm buying 'em." Yngvi gently prised them from Asher's slack hands, patting Asher on the cheek. "I need to read them. You know that. I love this shit. And we both know Liadan'll stick these straight in the vault with the masterpiece once I'm done, I just don't need her sticking my hide in there too for not passing these her way. 'Cause she'll find out. We both know that."

Numbly, Asher nodded, watching Yngvi disappear off to finish his haggling. He returned stuffing the books in his satchel, causing it to bulge at his side as he helped Asher back to his feet, a big bright smile on his face as he did.

"Right! Time to find Liadan, wait until you see the _bargains_ we got for dinner mate, you won't believe—" And so it went as Yngvi marched out, Asher on his heels, an incessant stream of prattle that washed over him as if the bodice rippers weren't burned into his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

Following a first day in Belnesse of settling in, selling off the things that didn't require any specific buyers, capped off with a dinner shared with Liadan's parents that lasted later into the night that any of them had bargained, the rest of the week was lazier. Everyone fell into the routine they preferred when life on the road didn't demand otherwise of them, late starts for most though Asher often found himself up early, unable to shake the habits that life on a farm had instilled in him from childhood, taking Bronson out for a stroll before the worst of the fog had rolled in while the hardened drinkers still staggered home, the markets setting up as they toured the streets in comfortable silence. Not many were up for a chat at that hour and maybe that was another reason why Asher preferred they headed out at that hour while some of the Boneflayers slept on. If the dwarves hadn't clocked them the instant they'd made the arrangements to head back, they knew by the end of that first week but Asher left Yngvi and Gunnar alone.  
  
They'd get to it when they got to it; he wasn't anyone to go pushing family reunions after all.  
  
Even in that first week of lazing around their space had come to resemble a home with alarming speed, the horses comfortably stabled, everyone finding their own little spaces; weapons and armour were laid out to be checked, polished, repaired in ways you just couldn't when you were packing up and moving on more often than not, Gunnar had the drying racks out for herbs in the kitchen since it was the warmest and driest space in the building, Yngvi had all his trap parts spiralling out in his room so he could order more, a small fletching workshop set up in the afternoons that seemed to form after lunch. They'd somehow formed a reading nook. Which mostly seemed to consist of Yngvi reading aloud his newest purchases – the first in the series – to an audience that included Bronson and was followed up with a riotous dissection. They cooked together. Laughed together. Shockingly they'd avoided going out drinking so far. Yngvi had pinned up a sheet of parchment as a shopping list, Melisende had organised a communal pool of coin to supply it for the bits and pieces they needed.  
  
They even got all the letters they'd ever written posted on the way to Liadan's parents' house because the invite to dinner the night of arriving had been more than a little bit of a kick in the backside to be better about it, a promise never to be kept for long.   
  
Not that any of it could last, they needed to work after all even if no one was hurting for coin and when Asher came back from his morning stroll with Bronson, the usual selection of breakfast rolls in hand only to have Melisende snag hers and disappear out the door. She was dressed in her leathers, blades in place, and she said not a word to him as she left.  
  
"Morning to you too," he muttered as she closed the door behind her as he strode to the kitchen table to sit, hollering on the way. "Breakfast's here if you want it, hurry up before Bronson gets it!"  
  
The threat served well as Gunnar appeared, stripping off his old acid-scarred apron and gloves. "Cheers Asher."  
  
"Someone with manners and it's you. Where's Melisende off to?"  
  
"Seeing some folk about the gems, Liadan can't go because of old thieves shit and politics with it." Gunnar took a huge bite, wiping a smear of sauce off his face with the back of his hand.  
  
"Your lot not do anything with that?" Asher asked, leaning back comfortably as he could, eyeing Gunnar speculatively. He wasn't on the same hair trigger as Yngvi but it was a near thing. And they were home now.   
  
"You'll get a better price going anywhere else – why?"  
  
Asher took another bite, fished out a rasher of bacon for Bronson who was slobbering all over the floor at the prospect of the rolls as if Asher hadn't bought him sausages to eat on the way home so the rolls would make it back intact. It bought him precious time: there was that suspicion he'd been worried about. "No reason, just checking you're still all in on the dodgy shit I'd be worried I got short changed all them years ago."  
  
"Everything we've done since and _that's_ what you're worrying about? I'd kick you if my legs were longer."  
  
"Either of you checked in though? No one wants surprise visits because _no one_ does surprise visits like your family. Hulda, she's all right, but after last time? I can't do that again, Nasir almost turning them into pincushions, finding out how many traps Yngvi had hidden about the place—"  
  
"He's not had the time." _Yet_ , Gunnar's face said as he stuffed the last of the roll in, licking his fingers. "D'you want us to check in?"  
  
"You don't need to go on your own, we'll all go or some of us, whatever works I mean you all come see my family with me—"  
  
"We get to stay on a farm; I got to see how to make cheese!"  
  
"You don't need to sound so excited." Asher tried, he honestly did, to sound annoyed but there was something infectious in Gunnar's sheer joy at getting to do whatever cheese making involved. Asher hadn't been part of that; his sister hadn't trusted his big dirty hands and said that on account of him being an idiot he couldn't come but Gunnar? Of course Gunnar was allowed because he had a brain in his head. "We'll just need work at some point, might get some work out of them or find out something worthwhile. Trade a little gossip back and forth to sweeten the pot."  
  
"If you're trying to get your feet under the door for family dinner," Gunnar said, leaning forward with an elbow on the table and a tired look on his face, "adopting the two of us out from Einar isn't going to do it, you'll still have to marry into the family."  
  
"Can't Melisende or Liadan do it? Why's it have to be me? Surely there's some strapping dwarves who couldn't wait to marry into us through them, they're a better match than me."  
  
"True. Very true. But you're the battle master so that's how it works, it's almost like firstborn son blah blah blah I don't know honestly _Yngvi_ would know more he's into torrid romances, I just like the bits where the poisons come into it or anything like that. He usually picks my brain to see if those bits work."  
  
"Do they?" Asher asked half out of morbid curiosity, half because Gunnar had no right knowing all that he did spending the better part of his childhood in the undercity of Belnesse. Or just in Belnesse. Belnesse wasn't exactly a great grower of things without roaming far and wide and he doubted Gunnar had done much of that before joining the Boneflayers.   
  
Gunnar grinned, eyes alight. "It's the things they do to heal you that'll kill you faster."  
  
"Good to know, never taking advice from anything in Yngvi's reading circle."  
  
"Do you read things that aren't tavern menus or job listings? Melisende and Liadan do the contracts but I don't _see_ you read, Asher."  
  
"Oh fuck off, go back to your plants you little shit." It would've been better if he'd had something to thrown at Gunnar's head but the dwarf had wisely kept all his gear on his lap, laughing all the way back to whatever he was doing with plants.   
  
Asher left him to it lest he wind up a test subject. Not to say that he wouldn't, there was always ample opportunity for that, knowing or not but the longer he spent lurking around the more chance there was that Gunnar might take it as a sign that Asher was willing to be a part of it. Best to go see who else might still be about their temporary home if Melisende was out and Gunnar busy. Amalia was stretched out in the reading space, the rest of the group absent but surrounded by various maps and intent enough that Asher passed her by without comment though Bronson ambled over to where some of his blankets were, throwing himself down with enough force to shake the floor, yawning and stretching hugely. A taxing morning such as it was to have gone for a constitutional about the lower city and scarf down fresh sausages fed to him from Asher's own hands, of course he needed his rest after all that. With one out and two accounted for not including himself and his hound, that still left three of the Boneflayers at large. Liadan could well be visiting her family or catching up with friends and Asher might have missed her, there wasn't any real check-in so long as someone knew where you were, who you were with, and roughly when you thought you'd be back just in case something went tits up. Heading upstairs just to continue his check, he passed Nasir and Amalia's door, cracked open a few inches, Nasir moving through a series of complicated fluid almost dance –like steps that Asher almost wanted to watch but that'd be weird.   
  
Honestly it was already weird to have even bothered peeking in their door, you didn't do that with a couple unless it was for work and he moved swiftly onwards.  
  
Yngvi's door was wide open and into the hall spilled not parts – which made a change, they'd all learnt years ago to wear keep wearing shoes near his door to spare the bare feet painful and often bloody encounters – but papers, Yngvi sprawled on his belly in the midst of it much as Amalia had been cross-legged downstairs.  
  
"All right?" Yngvi asked as the floorboards creaked on Asher's way past on the hunt for Liadan. Not that he was checking up but this was Belnesse, they'd been away long enough that he just wanted to know where everyone was.   
  
"You missed breakfast, I shouted and everything. Didn't know if you were in or out."  
  
"Thought I heard something. Did you feed it to Bronson?"  
  
"Thought about but no, it's still down there if no one else goes for it." Asher, mindful of not stepping on the papers tried leaning on the doorway and gave up. "What's all this?"  
  
"Plans."  
  
"Plans for what?"  
  
"You'll see. D'you need anything?"  
  
"Just checking in, seen Liadan about?"  
  
"Thought I heard her but maybe not I've been busy." Yngvi hadn't bothered looking up at all, a great smudge of ink up the right cheek and halfway across the bridge of his nose, another on his chin; his hands were a mess but the papers were immaculate save the scribblings. "Can you come back later I just—"  
  
"All right, all right I know what I'm not wanted."  
  
Yngvi said nothing as Asher departed, buried deep in his papers again. He'd have a shopping list of his own no doubt but if it kept him out of trouble then Asher wasn't about to complain. Finally he was at Liadan's closed door and he knocked, waited, and knocked again until she called out for him to come in.  
  
Liadan's room likely rivalled Melisende's own for neatness but where Melisende's came from years living life as a mercenary who'd become accustomed to packing her life into a bag, Asher still wasn't entirely sure if the neatness was a habitual thing of Liadan's or a thief's habit that she'd taught herself and carried with her. Not that he complained, she certainly made sure no one left a damn thing behind and that had saved them more than once packing up and moving on but every little thing had a place. Even the arrows in their quiver seemed orderly to him where it was slung over the end of the bed where Liadan was sat in olive green leggings and a shirt that might have been white once until too many washes in the river put paid to that.   
  
"I shouted about breakfast, I know Nasir's doing his—" Asher tried to pantomime it, a shoulder _and_ hip popping for his troubles, "thing. Yngvi's in a spiral of chaos I'm not touching, Gunnar ate, I think Amalia probably snagged something when I wasn't even looking and Melisende's gone out but I didn't know you were up here. Everything good?"  
  
"I'm not in the mood." Liadan said at length, unfolding her legs to swing them over the edge of the bed. Nothing in her posture invited Asher to sit by her and he remained where he was, an invited but maybe unwanted intruder, hovering.   
  
"For breakfast?" He asked, glancing back down the hall to Yngvi's door. The dwarf was probably too busy with his own work to take in what they were talking about but it didn't hurt. "D'you want me in or out, should I—"  
  
"In," Liadan's voice was sharp, Asher's head jerking up a fraction. "Shut it behind you, you might as well…shit you might as well take a seat."  
  
Taking a seat by the floor instead of the one chair in the room since that had clothes neatly laid upon it (not like his room where it had already disappeared beneath a small mountain of things he'd unpacked to be sorted later, later having been immediately after he'd unpacked, a date he would continue to put off until he no longer could such was ever Asher's way) he sat before her, left knee drawn to his chest, right leg stretched out comfortably. "Liadan," he tried again, smiled just enough that it wouldn't come off as him talking down to her because everyone hated that and she had just the right angle to kick him in the nose or the teeth for it as he'd deserve, "I'm going to ask you because you're my friend and also one of us and I probably need to know for several reasons: is everything all right?"  
  
"No. Yes and no. Being back here's just—Seeing mum and dad? Great, fantastic, love it. I'm not some people I won't mention." Liadan rolled her big dark eyes, swinging a foot lazily in the direction of Asher's chest and he did nothing to avoid it. Point taken. "But Melisende's off. Talking to _my_ old contacts. Who aren't talking to me because old thieves shit because I'm blacklisted. Still."  
  
"That was years back, thought we settled all that with you joining up?"  
  
"Nope." Her mouth shut with a click, the smile sharp and bitter. "You know why right?"  
  
To his shame – and his face did begin to heat – Asher didn't, shaking his head. "Because we made a bloody mess when we were sorting that out?" He guessed. His gut didn't much care for that answer though.   
  
Liadan sighed, the shake of her head and the shape of her mouth as it smiled pitying. "Because of the shape of my mother's ears Asher," she explained as if to a child and Asher's face heated worse than before.   
  
"I…I don't have an excuse for not thinking it'd be that do I? But—how come they'll deal with Melisende? She's an elf. Obviously an elf. Not half-elf."  
  
"I never worked out if the higher-ups had a thing specifically about half-elves – you know what some of them are like – or if it's actually because it's me but they're not wanting to say that because you know how thieves in Belnesse are, can't come out and give it an honest name can they?"  
  
"I'm sorry." He shifted his weight, Liadan not looking down at him, hands still in her lap. "D'you want us to…"  
  
"What does us cutting off a decent sort of income get us Asher? I appreciate it but you punching things, it won't help. It's just—it's shit. A bad hand, yeah, but I got you lot didn't I?" Liadan smiled but there was something tight about the edges of it that tugged at Asher as surely as it had to tug at Liadan; she'd just come home after all to where she actually did have parents who were good, who'd raised her up right and loved her, who invited them all to dinner as they always did whenever they first got back. The way Asher assumed families did with friends.  
  
He wouldn't know, not personally.   
  
"You didn't invite yourself into my room to be a sad or nosy bastard or go on about me missing greasy breakfast rolls; I can step on your balls if it'll wipe that look off your face."  
  
"I need them."  
  
"Reckon you don't, actually, we might find ourselves in a little less trouble if they weren't getting in the way of things."  
  
Asher snorted, grabbing Liadan's foot when it swung his way, no real intent in it but it didn't hurt to catch it all the same. "I did come here to be a nosy bastard though, bad habits being in and out of each other's pockets ain't it? Like I said: I wanted to see what folk are all up to, you got any irons in the fires?"  
  
"I did hear a bit of chatter in the market, few jobs we might be interested in if we're easing into getting our faces back out there?"  
  
"Now that sounds like my sort of thing, I'll just—"  
  
"You'll just go fetch me my breakfast roll, heat it back up, bring me some tea, _then_ we'll talk through it before we all decide what we're fancying. Oh and at least one involves your boys and their dad."  
  
"Of course it does," Asher sighed, shook his head and went off to go fetch her breakfast. Again.   
  


* * *

  
  
Melisende didn't arrive back until late in the day when Asher had his shirtsleeves rolled up past his elbows with a rich hearty stew being prepared with the aid of some of Gunnar's herbs recruited into the effort because if they were somewhere they had a kitchen, he'd be taking advantage of it to do some real cooking for a change. Amalia was still busy at her work, something that now involved old crates she'd found beneath the building and had dragged upstairs to make an extra table of sorts, something with pins and string that she wasn't talking about because _it's not ready yet Asher I'll burn your stinky beard off_. Yngvi had appeared to stuff his face at one point, feed the horses, and take Bronson on another walk, and Nasir had gone to catch up with friends, Liadan—  
  
Well he'd left Liadan to her own devices when he'd decided he was going to cook dinner until he'd needed back-up in kicking Gunnar out of the space.  
  
A darkly clad shadow stole up to his elbow, the spoon clattering back into the pot.  
  
"Needs more rosemary. Or thyme? Which one is it?"   
  
"I'll hang a bell on you? All of you." Hand to his chest as his heart leapt, Asher spun round the knife he'd been using to cut the vegetables still in hand as Melisende grinned, hood pushed back as she leant comfortably against the cupboard, hip cocked. Her hand stole towards the pot once again until he slapped at it with the hand not holding a knife. "You'll spoil your dinner."  
  
"I'd say you sound like my mother but—anyway, what's for dinner?"  
  
"We got good lamb at the market so stew, need to use it up. Good proper Riach stew, none of that Belnesse shite they try passing off." Angling himself between her and the pot to keep it safe, he gave Melisende a once over as she gave the pot another look of longing, her stomach growling loudly in the quiet of the kitchen. "Profitable day?"  
  
"Our bandits were a busy bunch: uncut amethysts mostly but there were a couple of emeralds and a ruby in there too, I've got the coin on me to decide what we're going to do with it once I speak to Liadan and Yngvi to go over the books."  
  
"Liadan's got some ideas for jobs but we'll need to talk to both the lads, Amalia's up to something, Nasir might too. You pick up much?"  
  
"Thieves deal with me because it's too much of a slight to you not to and it's a slight to Liadan all at once. "  
  
"Nothing then?"  
  
"More that they wanted me to really push for in that patronising shitty way of theirs and I'm not doing it. I'm not." Melisende sighed, shaking her head; she reached for the spoon to fish out some onion again and this time Asher didn't stop her. "One of you can do it instead; I didn't leave Aubin to keep dealing with all that shit. Not now."  
  
"Me, Nasir or Amalia'll do it, we'll take a vote or it'll probably be me, let them know what we think at some point; there's got to be some benefits of who we are." Asher didn't believe the words when he said them, turning back to chopping the carrots for adding at the end. "I've not gone looking for much later, it's been good to have a bit of a breather for a while."  
  
"You sure about that? You looked peaky when you came back from shopping."  
  
"Can you blame me? Those books of Yngvi's? Liadan's putting them in her vault along with _the masterpiece_ \- almost everything in there is to do with me and I don't know all the contents or where it is!" He knew that his voice was rising in pitch enough that he sounded irrational as well as increasing the risk of drawing an audience but he didn't care, it was patently unfair, he'd remind all of them of that as needed.  
  
"You're a big boy, get over yourself. Let me go wash up, d'you need them chased?"   
  
"Everyone's fine, I don't mind a bit of quiet when I get to cook."  
  
"That was always the thing that surprised me about you."  
  
"I grew up on a farm and you know my mother, d'you think she'd let me get away with slacking on anything, firstborn and all? All of us were pitching in with whatever needed doing and honestly there's something soothing about it."  
  
"Rather you than me."  
  
Melisende stole half a carrot on the way before he could stop her, hip swinging wide enough to barge his and send her coin purse jingling as she went on her way, calling out for Liadan and Yngvi in a way that echoed off the rafters as it would on a battlefield. Asher shook his head, laughing quietly to him as Bronson wandered through to sniff about for anything that might happen to fall into his mouth as he so often hoped for. But it was warm by the stove, Asher chatting away happily to him as he always did, interpreting huffs or grunts or long silences as he would for whatever answer he preferred until the stew was done, the Boneflayers all summoned down to the table for dinner, all of it inhaled at lightning speeds as ever. Yngvi had already stacked the dishes ready for washing since it was his turn, the cutlery piled up on top as they all lingered around the table.  
  
"Obviously we didn't just come back to Belnesse just for the sake of coming back to the old stomping grounds," Asher began after he'd poured himself a drink, offering it around the table. "We're not wasting money sitting here, I know we made a bit selling off scrap and Melisende I don't know what you got from the gems there either from the last job but we're a democracy here so ideas, plans, anything you want to put forward I think we've had enough time to rest from travel to do it."  
  
"There's a few things going with the thieves if anyone who doesn't have pointed ears going on wants to start getting in on it," Melisende reached for her glass, sharing a sour look with Liadan who snorted with a muttered curse. "Some of it overlaps with your lot."  
  
Yngvi pulled a face, downing half his beer in one go, hastily wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "So what, me and him go to family dinner and all? Because bugger that for a lark ours are shit, they're absolute shit and we'll do it but thieves bit comes first."  
  
"I'll go if you don't want to." There was no subtlety to Gunnar's kick. "Reidar'll want to catch up but you know Hulda'll spare you the worst of it—"  
  
"It's fine, we'll both go, and you know Einar'd never let either of us come back without the full grilling, if he hasn't before, why would he start now?"  
  
"It's been longer now—"  
  
"Exactly!"  
  
"Lads!" Nasir interrupted with a laugh, clapping Yngvi hard on the shoulder. "Simmer down, family dinner with all of yours? Tell them to save me a seat I'll be there of course, not letting you savour those delights alone."  
  
"I'm not going down into that pisshole," Amalia wrinkled her nose. "I'll be in the pub."  
  
"Wouldn't expect you to come everywhere with me but you know how I love Einar's hospitality and his sense of style."  
  
"So dwarven check-in: Yngvi, Gunnar, Nasir?" Liadan asked, waiting for the nods to come before she took down notes after a sip of her beer. "Nasir if you're doing that then Amalia and Asher do you want to go see what the thieves might be offering up?"  
  
"I've got a few things I don't mind reminding them, why not?" Asher agreed, flashing Melisende a smile and she smiled back at him, clinking their tankards together. "Amalia are you in or do you have anything else going?"  
  
"I'll come _but_ I have something I wanted to check with all of you. Because it's probably us but still a bit outside our usual line of work: there's something going on with the Order here, something to do with mages that I've been looking into for a while now, it's getting more aggressive than usual but it's Belnesse, they've always been willing to look the other way no matter who or what you are here." Pushing her hair away from her face, she took a breath, cheeks flushed in a way they rarely got, Amalia who had her temper but not these moments where she struggled to find her words. "The Order have mages they've been locking up, I've been trying to keep track of it and it's spreading, I'll get the maps out later so you can have a better look but it's…I don't like it. Not here. Not in Belnesse. I ended up in Belnesse because if there was a city where it was fine to be a mage and stroll about without having to be titled or attached to it then it was here."  
  
"Is any of it connected, maybe? All that Order shit stirred everything up with the elves generations back that we're still sniping at one another about it now, if it's getting tense in Belnesse and people are taking backhanders…" Liadan frowned, tapping her fingers against the table as she breathed out slowly through her nose.  
  
Asher dragged a hand over his beard. "The Order's not going to be happy until all of us are under the thumb, it's probably spoiling for another war to get going, there's nothing driving up their numbers like war even if it's one they instigated."  
  
"Is Order business something we really need to go sticking our noses into?" Melisende asked, looking between Asher and Amalia with a resigned air of a woman who'd had the argument with them too many times to stomach having it another time. "That's a hornet's nest."  
  
"It's worth looking into," Asher replied immediately, Amalia nodding. "The Order can't keep getting involved in everything under the sun—"  
  
"Just because you've a chip on your shoulder over it," Melisende interrupted, glancing around the table for someone to support her but neither Yngvi or Gunnar would look her way, Nasir subtly leaning Amalia's way, and Liadan had the same tired look Melisende had, the exaggerated slow blink to hide the eye roll. Melisende continued, undaunted. "It doesn't mean that all of us have to get dragged into it too."  
  
"As if you'd understand," Amalia sniffed and Asher winced, sucking a breath through his teeth as the air in the room changed and not through some spell being worked, consciously or not.  
  
"Don't pretend you're the only one sitting here at this table who's known the Order's got teeth because you've got magic. That it somehow makes it the very worst for you. You didn't even grow up in towns or cities." Melisende's voice had dropped, a low and coiled thing, prepared to strike, and Asher shifted in his seat, a decade and more of it being directed at him stoking old memories to the surface.  
  
Amalia slapped a hand on the table before Nasir could draw her arm back, glancing over at Asher and Liadan for help before the battle lines were drawn up as the woman took a deep breath, all her teeth bared as she smiled. "And why do you think that was, Melisende? Because both my parents had magic and it's not exactly an easy thing to live a normal life with magic wherever the Order are and then go raising up a child with it. Who employs us?"  
  
"Who d'you think employs elves?" Liadan spoke up for the first time in the argument, chin tilted up in defiance with fewer teeth showing but about as much friendliness in her smile.   
  
(Yngvi had almost slid under the table. Asher could hardly blame him.)  
  
"Lia—" Amalia tried, only for her to be cut off.  
  
"No, there's a reason I ended up as a thief before you lot found me and Melisende—"  
  
"I'm not doing this now just—you're not the only one, Amalia and _him_ ," Melisende's thumb jerked out Asher's way and he held up his hands automatically, "to have a bad hand from it and I'm sorry but it doesn't give you by and leave to go claiming it."  
  
"Maybe we all need to simmer down," Asher said finally with a burning face, sweat under his armpits. "Things are going to be said that we'll all regret so let's not, right? It's us against all of it, that's the reason we're all here, together. Amalia'll and I'll have a look at that with you tomorrow _but_ we need to look at it with Melisende too. We'll look at the thieves thing too to make sure we've got that angle too. Yngvi, Gunnar, Nasir you'll be off to check in with the dwarves. We've got the other usual cronies to go catch up with as well. Agreed?"  
  
There was silence around the table, Amalia huffing like an old bull, red in the face.   
  
"Anyone who wants to come join me at the docks is absolutely free to do so," Nasir chimed in finally as if nothing had been said to sour the mood, clapping a hand on Yngvi's shoulder to haul him back up into his seat before he slid down to the floor. "Few drinks, few cards, some good distracted faces to go picking pockets or a willing audience for a few cons if you're up for it?"  
  
"Now that's what I like to hear you know me so well it almost makes up for the farty horses. Horses I will be renaming." Yngvi threw back the last of his beer, holding it out for a refill that Asher poured without a second glance.   
  
Dinner or drinks, didn't quite recover but the talk turned to money, supplies, what they'd picked up and what they'd need for the next few jobs from Melisende, Liadan, and Yngvi, their ledgers and papers taking over the table as everyone sorted out their odds and ends, a familiar hum that Asher more or less tuned out. Money talk did that to him, it always had until it was his turn to chip in. It wasn't until afterwards, Asher settled with Bronson that Amalia was at his elbow, splotches of red high at her cheeks that the evening still wouldn't be over, the matter not settled until she deemed it settled.  
  
"You're going to look at some of it tonight." If she'd meant for it to be a question, it fell flat, her arms folded across her chest as she blocked his way out of the kitchen to freedom.   
  
"I was going thinking pub, maybe, but I could look over some of what you've got." He tried to keep the reluctance out of his voice; the last thing he needed was for anyone to think the group was against them, that anyone had an opinion that didn't carry weight.   
  
"You don't think it's right either, do you?" She asked as she turned sharply on her heel to lead the way through to where she'd been working away when he'd passed her earlier in the day, unaware of the hornet's nest she'd lob at the dinner table. "I mean you being you. Coming from where you're free."  
  
"I'm from a farm hold on Riach."  
  
"Don't be obtuse, you know what I mean."  
  
Asher sighed out his nose, sinking down to the floor wishing he was the one who had to do the dishes, not Yngvi. Not that it would've stopped Amalia, she'd just have taken her work through with her or she'd have waited there for him to be done, no matter how long he might've dragged it out for. He'd seen her at work. He'd experienced it. "Doesn't mean you were in the right about elf shit though, if you're not an elf, don't go offering up your opinions unasked for. You're apologising to the both of them. Proper apology, I mean it."  
  
Amalia waved him away as she went for her work until he stared her down, unimpressed. "Yes _dad_ I'll say sorry to them."  
  
"We don't gain shit from dividing ourselves and that's probably something we'd be best learning from the elves. Not that we will. No one learns a thing in Brae Saoidh."  
  
"Asher," Amalia set a hand upon his knee and he startled at it, lifting his head from his chest. "Don't be a depressing bastard about this, I don't need it. Just—just look at all this? Listen to me. You grew up in Riach how you did and I grew up in a group a bit like this with parents just like me because they didn't have other places to go because the world was pushing them out and it's been getting worse for years. You can see it. It's spreading further and further in Riach. Isn't that why you're here?"  
  
There wasn't much Asher could say to that, the wound raw even after all these years and well Amalia knew it as she pointed at her map urgently, the distraction welcome for him now.   
  
"Let's see it then," Asher said at length, crossing his legs with a knee popping in protest. Someone laughed in the kitchen. Gunnar maybe. "You know, I don't think I ever told you how I got kicked out the house did I?"  
  
"Something about a fight, finally shamed your mother enough she couldn't take it no more."  
  
"More or less." Asher leant forward, elbows on his knees, chin on his hands to see Amalia's work before them, the care she'd put into it, the great shame it would be to leave it where it was. Sometimes he forgot how it sounded to hear your life summed up in so few words, just an unimportant footnote to someone else. "So, talk me through this. Same as planning a battle, I'll get us a drink it looks like it'll be thirsty work."


	5. Chapter 5

Amalia had woken Asher early since the holy lot liked to rise at dawn for some reason or another. Asher knew that his own up in the hold did too but that was to greet the Gods and leave offerings or to read signs and portents, not to get on with whatever bureaucracy of the day was called for when it came to The Order. But he complained little, roused himself with a wash and the thought of tidying up the beard but then why bother? Asher Hardie and the Boneflayers were known for who and what they were, a dirty great savage of a man would be a dirty great savage of a man regardless the condition of his beard and it was ludicrous that he'd even entertained the notion of tidying it up for men and women of alleged faith. Amalia was in her leathers by the door, an impatient frisson about her that combined with the freshly-oiled garb had him seeing fresh blood, a thought he had to forcibly shake away. After all they'd gone over the night before they weren't striking while the iron was hot, not exactly, but doing the due diligence of scouting about. Belnesse had changed while they'd been away after all.

Melisende wasn't about to tell them not to do anything foolish but Asher gave Amalia a nudge on the way out the door. "Best behaviour, mind that."

"Yes _mother_ ," she muttered back at him, the surliness not the best start as he closed up quiet as he could. It wouldn't do to go waking the whole house without needing to. "We'll walk, better to walk than to steer horses up and about there, easier too if we end up with some reason to ditch them."

"Thought I was dad, how'd that change overnight?" Asher lightened his tone, shortening his step so Amalia wasn't hurrying to try to keep up with him.

"You had a mum voice on you, I mean come on we were just at Liadan's, next time we run into mine prick up your ears _or_ better yet you can ask the boys."

"Gods no I can never keep track of how many they've got, I was up to seven last time, don't even know if that's how dwarves work, if it's how their sort of dwarves work, or if it's Einar's brand of bullshit."

Amalia snorted, turning off to lead them through a narrow alleyway instead of the main junction to avoid the bustle of everyone trying to get their goods and stalls in and set up for the chaos of the market, the shouts carrying high in the fetid stink of the morning air. Somehow Asher never tired of that, the way it woke him up every time he came back even though it was rancid city air, likely doing something terrible to him judging from how ill the people got more often than not compared to how it tended to go out in the countryside where they so often travelled and where he'd grown up. But there was a fondness he couldn't deny when it came to Belnesse and if that was just from him forging the Boneflayers good and proper here then he'd take it and say nothing.

"He's got more relatives than he's had hot dinners," she said finally after she'd brought them out on the other side, quickly checking for any sign of dwarven clan or the many thieves darting about. Though they might be spared. They had good terms with them, or as good as it got for an independent outfit. "Not that's saying too much."

"Should make for an interesting dinner tonight when we all catch up round the table. Y'know, supposing we don't get clapped in irons."

"You're the one who needs bailed out more often than anyone else."

"People see a big lad from Riach—"

"You put people through tables, Asher."

Asher shut his jaw with a snap, regretting not bringing Bronson along but same as horses, a hulking scarred hound attracted attention and didn't make for the speediest of getaways should they be in need as they carried on their way to where the cathedral stood, a building of dark stonework that Asher could admit was beautiful in its own way if he wasn't aware of the expense of such a thing, smack-dab in the middle of such a prime part of Belnesse, frequented as it was by the well-heeled. That had ever been a sticking point for him that he'd been swallowing when prospective employers weren't charmed by the scandal of having some heathen backwards man believing in the old ways working for them; the rich had been the ones involved with the Order from the very start, so it had gone, when it had swept into Brae Saoidh to stoke war after war, shattering beliefs held for untold generations in their wake. It rankled in him as he and Amalia both fished coin out their pouches to drop into the bowl of a beggar sat by the steps, a woman garbed in vestments sweeping them up and away as she hurried up and away past them.

"You got a place to sleep?" Amalia asked, crouching down, leathers squeaking, her hand clutching that of a man's that shook as he reached out.

"There's a group—small group of us. Old timers you know, we go down to the undercity. Dwarves and thieves might not like it so much but we don't cause enough fuss to be a fuss. Thank you both." Now that Asher looked closer he could tell he wasn't as old as he seemed but that was what life did to you wasn't it, he might well have been one who'd come over during the refugee influx in the fighting years back or even been a soldier with nowhere left to go, and he nodded, trying for a smile that he hoped was less tight than it felt as his eyes itched to glare daggers in the direction of the retreating woman.

"If there's anything else…" Asher trailed off but he was waved away so he left, Amalia grabbing his arm to haul herself up as they continued on their way. "D'you see that one? Biggest bloody scam that there is since it came along."

"It's Belnesse," Amalia replied, answering a question Asher hadn't asked but hung there nonetheless, an undercurrent to everything that was said or done or overheard once you crossed the limits and gained entry. "You can gripe about it later when we're all home, mind you'll probably have to wait for Melisende to tear the arse off us both cause you know she'll not be pleased."

"Don't start, she's got her reasons and you know it."

"I know. I know." Amalia took a breath. Blew it out. Did it four more times in rapid succession under Asher's watchful gaze as they walked about and pretended not to notice the stares they got since it wasn't unheard of for mercenaries to come up here – not unheard of for the Boneflayers to be employed in this area of the city either – but whenever someone unexpected showed up there were always eyes. Seemed to be more of them too if Asher was any judge as they stopped by the noticeboard; always a handy excuse for a spot of loitering if ever there was one. A charitable organisation being put together by the well-to-do, guild membership reminders in print that caught the early light to shame anyone who dared to drag their heels, job offerings because there was always work on the go, some rally or other to complain about the conditions in a group of foundries, the schedule of prayers for the week to come—

"I appreciate it." Amalia's voice startled Asher out of whatever daze he'd been lulled into, the roaring in his ears dying away as she spoke. It happened sometimes, probably better she snapped him out of it now rather than letting it brew, he knew the signs and it never brought much good, to have it start spilling up and boiling over up here wouldn't serve them well. "You coming up here with me, I know you said Melisende should come with us too but—"

"This is just two of us stretching our legs, going for a walk." The lie though didn't sit well with him. Asher wasn't in the habit of lying to Melisende and last night no one had gone to bed happy with one another, something they all tended to be careful of given their line of work. "We still need to look over it but if we've got more to say—"

"Can I help either of you?"

The interruption came from a stranger, a low rough voice that was Belnesse but not born and bred, transplanted and dragged up from elsewhere but long enough here and it wore down all traces of where any folk had come from if you weren't careful. Asher had seen it plenty of times with the war refugees spilling in, some understandably willing to leave all their past behind them. Turning slowly, Asher and Amalia were greeted by a tall man (shorter than Asher himself, he noted, but then how many men not born to the mountains had the height he had?) with his head shaved down to a fine dark stubble, dressed in dark rough spun robes of the Order. He wasn't quite smiling at them, arms folded inside the loose sleeves as he looked them up and down.

"Just looking at the board," Asher said before Amalia could as she inhaled through her nose, looking the man up and down even as Asher longed to put a hand on her arm and mutter _steady_ at her. About as much as he wanted someone to do the same to him in all honesty. "Not a sin, is it?"

"There are those who find a way with all in this world. I'm Brother Deacon." He inclined his head, arms still folded, feet shoulder width apart. A comfortable stance. _Not_ the stance of the holy.

Asher shared a glance with Amalia who nodded, rolling her shoulders back. "Amalia. That’s Asher Hardie. You'll have heard of the Boneflayers mercenary company, won't you Brother? Surely we've not been away _so_ long," Asher bit the inside of his cheek as Amalia continued on, "and a Brother has to be a man of the people doesn't he?"

"We've been away for a time, I'm sure we can find it within us to forgive you if you haven't. Don't know all the prayers or rites about that," Asher added, leaning back against the board with a grin that didn't reach his eyes, folding his arms too.

Deacon barked out a laugh, a guard's head turning their direction then back to their post again. "Perhaps you should come to prayers tonight," he inclined his head, to the listing somewhere behind Asher's shoulder and so much more drab than that the reminder of the merchants, "and refresh yourselves of our teachings then, ask God to forgive you with all the rest."

"We'll pass on that." Amalia's mouth had pursed itself into the falsest of smiles Asher had seen out of her in weeks, usually reserved for about the breakfast table when there was ribbing to be done and he almost laughed if not for sticking to the plan they'd agreed upon.

"Wouldn't want to worry the flock. Or the gentler amongst you. Discerning company about these parts so we've noticed." Asher's gaze flitted back to the beggar still sheltered where he was then back to Deacon's, watching for any change in expression, and at least his head dropped, shoulders hunched against some invisible force Asher didn't know.

"All are welcome, that is the message we are to spread. Any and all reminders are welcome. If you'll forgive me."

But there wasn't a chance, Deacon had left, hands out of his robes where two strong square hands emerged with knots on the knuckles that didn't come from the work Asher associated with the holy life. He knew those hands. They were the hands he had after the life he'd picked after meeting Melisende, taking to the mercenary way of it, to fighting and scrapping; watching Deacon stop alongside the beggar, he noticed that he didn't pass him by, didn't stand above him but sat comfortably alongside, shoulder to shoulder.

"Come on," Amalia kicked Asher's foot. "Stop staring at him or they'll call the guards on us, no one's so popular they can avoid it and you've a reputation when it comes to the faith."

"As if it's any better than yours."

"Which of us is barred from houses of worship in more than a dozen towns and villages? Oh who could it be, mmm, is it the illustrious stinking wonder that is Asher Hardie?"

"None of that's for scrapping with the honourable holy sect." Asher made sure to wink, enjoying Amalia's exaggerated shudder of disgust as she hurried a few steps ahead of him. "Just so I'm clear on this since we _were_ meant to be doing this with a third party before you hauled me—"

"Hardly, d'you reckon I could get your fat arse out of bed on my lonesome?"

"Oi! This is all muscle right here!" All the same Asher did glance down. Maybe he was letting himself off a little easy between work like this but how rarely they got a decent bit of downtime of sleeping in beds, being able to decide he wanted a breakfast roll with everything in it on his morning strolls with Bronson, cooking in a proper kitchen instead of over a fire or on the pot that they'd probably have to replace-- No, he wasn't offended at Amalia's suggestion. Or was he? Was he hurt? Was it both? Amalia was staring at him, giving him that puckered cat's arse smile again so he ploughed on. "What're we doing? What's the actual point of the two of us up here today first thing? Just so I'm completely clear on it since you'll piss off when we get back or even before and I'll be the one left to explain it don't even try to deny that's how it'll go."

"It's like you said: we're stretching our legs, getting our faces about so it doesn't look well dodgy if we just rock up here and get up to something. We'll need to make more of a showing of ourselves, drag the rest too and make it look natural."

"I can't wait to see you sell Yngvi and Gunnar…scratch that, they'll be fine, they've been running scams like that here longer than the rest of us, bet Einar's probably been trying to crack the Order for decades now."

"Seems the type. Just. Anything we can hear. Or find out. I doubt they're keeping anyone like me about the place but people talk and you saw what I did, miss too good for the riff raff as if it'd dirty her to acknowledge who she's meant to help."

Asher hesitated too long for Amalia's liking as they drew to a stop by the well-tended planters of herbs that lined the perimeter of the cathedral, her bent to run her fingers over them and he suspected she'd be using that as a good reason to attract Gunnar up, and if Gunnar came then Yngvi would so that'd be two more milling about the area, and Gunnar would want to chatter about plants, would ask to trade maybe or at least sit with his notebook—

"Buggerlugs."

"That brother seemed decent," he grudgingly admitted, lip curling as he did so.

Amalia's laugh caught in her throat and choked. "You've a face as if you got served a pint of piss on you. 'Sides, one perhaps decent brother does not a good place make."

"Valeriane's sister, what's she going by these days?"

"Sister Vervain because she's as theatrical as any Bonheur," Amalia replied with a roll of the eyes as they started walking again, shaking her head. "Never thought I'd live to see the day you'd have a soft spot."

"I don't but did you see his hands?"

"I did. I did. We'll need to watch for him."

"Exactly. Ah shit, c'mon we need to turn off and find someone to chat to, might've gotten a bit hands-on with that one eyeballing us."

The guard in question was a shrewd older woman who'd been in her early forties last time the Boneflayers had passed through Belnesse, or thereabouts, her dark hair mostly gone to grey by now with a no-nonsense set to her jaw, a memory that couldn't be argued with, and for all that she stood a whole head shorter than Asher she possessed the unquestionable ability to manhandle him out of the tavern all the way to the cells when he'd gotten into a fight that had only been ended by him. Not that she'd seen it that way. Even if he'd paid his bail _and_ even settled up good and proper with the tavern owner for the damages he wasn't about to incur her wrath again as he and Amalia steered themselves off and into a throng of those coming to make offerings, receive blessings, and do whatever it was that they did before God.

He couldn't help but think it was so much simpler when your gods were the same as his, living and breathing with and around you, moving with all that you did instead of confined to one place to be called upon. But it was such a good way to have them all called upon, dependent, willing to defend it and to pay their tithes that some part of him congratulated them once again on a marvellous scam as Amalia struck up conversation with former employers waiting for morning prayers to be called as he caught Deacon's gaze, both of them nodding warily and turning away reluctantly – at least on Asher's part - to the matters at hand.

* * *

They'd ended up with several job offers, if not any information that seemed useful to what they'd set out with in mind by the time they departed from the cathedral's gaze, a not entirely wasted morning for them that turned into lunch where Amalia treated Asher despite his protests since he'd come along with her even if it hadn't been what she'd said the night before. A quiet little pub frequented by workers by night, it was empty during the lunch hours when most folk were too busy to get the time to stop off during a shift so they had it mostly to themselves, going over the jobs they could bring back, the way the mood had changed in their absence.

"You ever think it's funny how Belnesse never got in a war even when it's got a whopping great cathedral and all the Order types in it?" Amalia asked as she bit into her sandwich, pickle dripping down the side of her thumb and onto the wooden plate.

Asher considered it, watching her, trying to gauge her mood; all things considered, she wasn't as put out as she might have been given how little they'd gotten out of the morning. "Where's the profit in war for them? They're not in an ideal position for it and they've not got the army for it, despite the size of the faith they could raise up."

"Exactly." She swallowed her bite, washing it down with dark ale. "D'you recognise that one that came up to us?"

"Brother Deacon? No, he must've come here after we left here but we don't hang around up there do we? Could've been around and we've missed him. Seemed…"

"Seemed what? Like he actually gave a shit? S'pose there's a first time for everything with them."

"True enough. You got a plan then for the next step?"

"Talk to Melisende, throw myself – and you – on her most tender of mercies. Keep going back, make some friends. See if Brother Deacon is up for being chums."

"Seemed a bit off though, didn't he?"

"Dunno actually, reminded me of you if you'd gone up and joined the faith the way your mum might've wanted you to."

"Don't even joke, that's too far even for you."

Amalia kicked him on the table, a good solid whack right on the shin that had him biting his tongue instead of his next bite, choking on the sandwich. "Reckon the rest are getting on better?"

"Well Nasir and the lads aren't even off until later unless dwarf dinner means something different to what we mean and even as I say that I'm realising that it absolutely will and some part of me _almost_ wishes I'd be off to witness it. Almost. You ever been?"

"Yeah, back when they joined up. Einar said he had to see who his boys were signing on with, felt like I was buying them." Asher knew it wasn't so far from the truth though he skirted it, and Amalia's glance back down at her hand to chase the last of the pickle from it told him that she knew it same as he did.

"He's a right creepy old bugger he is, he'd buy and sell you for parts if he found you dying in a ditch so he would. Still, can't be all bad can they?"

"You've really not met many of them have you?"

"What part of undercity makes you think I want to go down there and come up smelling like arse?"

"It doesn't smell like arse. Much." There was an undeniable smell that a person got used to because that tended to happen, and Asher could point out that they'd all worked jobs that came with far worse stenches but some things a person just didn't want to be reminded of and far be it from him to point that out to Amalia now when they were finishing up a good lunch. "They do bathe down there, the dwarves I mean, and the thieves, there's a great unwashed but – and I don't know if you've noticed – that happens plenty places."

"Don't remind me: who was burning up all the bodies the last place we were? Oh, oh wait it's coming back to me, was it…yes…yes it was—it was _me_ Asher, it was me and oh what a _stench_ , what a terrible stench." Amalia grinned, her voice having dropped to a whisper so as not to invite looks from any neighbouring tables as she took a sip of her ale before continuing as Asher shoved the last bite of sandwich in, chewing furiously before anything she said could ruin it. "You know that unwashed bodies do smell much much worse than washed ones and there were lice bursting and popping—"

"Amalia!" He interrupted, louder than he'd meant to, mouth still full and trying not to choke.

"The fleas trying to escape from them. Pop-pop-pop," she mimed it with a hand either side, eyes alight.

Despite knowing exactly what she was talking about from more first-hand experience than most might care to admit, Asher could still find it within himself to gag wetly to Amalia's delight. Maybe he still had some softness in him but the rest of them hadn't seem what some of the pests out in the world did to farm animals that he had for his first fifteen years, none of the gentle or bucolic pictures – or whatever other pretty words lurked in books akin to Yngvi's bodice-rippers – had existed on the family holdings. Liver flukes eating sheep from the inside out, that's what he could remember a few times, rare occasions true but he was glad he'd finished eating.

Glad that this was far from where they'd find Perdita either. Meeting her with Amalia in tow wouldn't bode well for any party.

"Anyway," he said after a long moment swallowing past the sudden rush of sour wetness in his mouth to Amalia's great relish, "you got any preference for the jobs we've got? Figure between the two of us since we spotted 'em we get to decide what we want most out of them."

"You might not like it and we'll need to be careful about it but seeing what's up with delaying the shipments for the holy lot? Gets us on their good side – and we could use it Asher, how many places you banned from anyway at this point? – and we might be able to get a look about. I…" she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth, biting down, a deep breath in and out through her nose before she could bring herself to continue. "I need that Asher. I owe it to them. People like me. World's not getting any better, is it?"

"No." Asher agreed, resisting the urge to drag his hands down and over his face. "No it's not; we'll lead with that, for good reasons. Maybe chat to Deacon again if we need to. He might know what to do with some of the supplies we'll have coming over from my folks too – goodwill gesture seeing as we've handled that before without consulting them but if we had to…"

"Better to do it with someone who can bring himself to actually stop and talk to the great unwashed of Belnesse. D'you wonder if he's like the ones Yngvi and Gunnar said used to be down in the undercity?"

"Think it was knights back then. I mean, it was after the bad spate of fighting, not too many years before all of us got together and set up shop before we shipped out of here when we wanted to establish ourselves good and proper. What're they going to do down in the undercity?"

"Well I don't know, I've never been buying what they've been selling and I never lived in no cities did I?"

"Neither did I!"

"You—well shit." Amalia downed the last of her drink with a grimace at his point, Asher shrugging it over as he counted out the coins to dump on the table as a tip that Amalia added to with the rest on their way out "So it's what, Melisende—"

"Don't reckon it counts when she had to live in such a shit bit of Aubin as she did, they don't really let you live wherever you want there from how she painted it, least not back then, don't think it's gotten much better since—"

"So Liadan?"

"Liadan. Only one of who really knows how to live in a city good and proper – that we know of out of our esteemed company – with all that city living entails."

"That's a sad state of affairs that is."

Neither of them brought up Nasir. Asher was sure that from the way conversations and looks tended to go that much as he knew more of Melisende's history than he'd impart unless she gave him leave to, Amalia and Nasir had a similar arrangement. He was just fine with that. However Nasir had lived wasn't up to debate until Nasir decided it was relevant. But he had the impression he lived in the city or close enough from the way he knew his way about it, or he'd at least grown up in one unlike himself and Amalia who preferred the smaller stops, who would be chafing at the bit to get out of Belnesse again as soon as their time was up. It wasn't even the dirt and grime that did it for him it was—

It was something else, something more, but if he tried putting it in words he'd get it all slung back at him so he rarely bothered even inside his own head, at least not during the daylight hours.

Walking through the streets on the long way back home, perhaps putting off having to see Melisende and face her wrath, _and_ explain that they were going to be doing work for the Order too from the sounds of it when she'd been kept out the loop as well as not wanting any part of it in the first place.

"Mind we've got to go see the thieves later today, don't want to look a state when we do that," Asher said to Amalia as they went, taking a glance down at himself. The thieves were a funny lot about things who might have their hackles up if they'd dealt with Melisende already.

"Yeah, yeah, we'll swing back home first. Hey, is that the brother over yonder?"

Before Asher could question where and when Amalia might have picked up that particular habit, Asher followed to where she was gesturing and sure enough there he was, dressed in his dark robes, talking to the stallholders as he went with smiles and laughter that they both stood and watched.

"He…acts like a person," Asher muttered quietly to himself.

"Well so does Bonheur's sister and she had a whole load of funny stories about her growing up."

"Bonheur—Oh, Valeriane's sister, yeah, well, she's a whole other kettle of fish. Maybe he's worth keeping an eye on." Asher didn't bother reminding Amalia that your siblings _always_ had stories about you that could sound a hundred times more incriminating or salacious than they were in the light of day, it wasn't something she'd understand as the beloved only child that she was.

Amalia groaned, grabbing him by the elbow to wheel him about the other way entirely. "Right we're not having you butting heads with him over nothing so far, we might need him yet."

"I wasn't starting anything!"

"My arse you weren't, sizing him up like a stag at the rut."

"Amalia!" He tried to shake free of her grip only to catch her again when it threw off her balance enough to send her careening too wide and almost into the path of a dwarven dockworker who cursed at them. "Sorry mate, long morning and a late liquid breakfast, you know how it is!"

There was a grumbling complaint, the dwarf passing them by as Asher turned his head slowly to glare at Amalia who grinned back wolfishly. "Don't even joke," he told her sternly.

"All right, all right don't get your knickers in a twist. Let's go home, sort ourselves out, pray to whatever one of your gods steps in to stop pissed off elves with daggers."

"I'm not taking a dagger for you."

"Who'd believe that little old me could pull you all the way to the cathedral with me?" Amalia had no right to be able to pull off looking as innocent as she did, and yet she managed, staring up at him with an expression that said butter wouldn't melt.

"If I said you had my balls to the fire she'd believe me and that's always a threat with you."

Amalia snorted, slapping Asher hard on the back and took the lead on the way back to their house, stopping on the way to say hello to the horses, some dilly-dallying Asher could get behind. Maybe the others would still be about. Maybe the dwarves and Nasir wouldn't have left yet. Liadan hadn't had plans either that Asher had been able to find out but Amalia's Order plans had curtailed the dinner conversation getting back to normal so if she did, Asher hadn't asked; her bedroom door had been shut by the time he'd gotten finished up later than planned, Melisende's door closing when he'd tried speaking to her too and that had been that. It put him uncomfortably in mind of his mother in ways he didn't care to examine.

"C'mon, time to face the music, get inside and wash up, we'll make it worse standing out here like spare dicks at a wedding."

"What weddings you been to?" Amalia asked, sounding more intrigued than he'd expected as he hustled her away from horses seeking more treats and inside where Bronson came barrelling towards them. "Oh hello slobbery boy did you miss us? Did you miss us oh yes you did we're sorry yes we are!"

 _So much for stealth_ , Asher thought; between Bronson and Amalia's loud babytalk there was no way anyone still in the house could've missed them but he dropped to the floor, Bronson leaving Amalia to knock him flat on his back, a hot blast of dog breath in his face as he was flattened, hands grabbing at loose skin in mock alarm.

"Felled by a vicious beast in my prime, I cannot go on!" He cried out, Amalia's wheezy laugh coming from near his ear where he could just about see her in his periphery, still on the floor with her legs stretched out. "A monster, you've bested me, I'm done for. Amalia…tell…my sister—"

"You'd wake the damned dead with the racket the pair of you make."

Melisende's voice was a bucket of cold water; Asher jerking his head up and to the side to peer around Bronson so he could see her stood there with her arms folded but no daggers in sight.

"Missed both of you this morning," she continued as Amalia wiped her face, getting her legs under her so she could get to her feet. Asher gave Bronson a nudge, murmur _c'mon lad, let us up here_ and swung himself to sitting so he could get a better look. "A little rude even for a pair of ferals."

"We…" Amalia started, glancing over at Asher who stood, a hand on Bronson's back, rubbing the fur the wrong way then back, repeating it as the hound leant heavily against him, eyes closing in rapture. "Not not we, _I_ wanted to go with just Asher. You didn't seem interested the same way as us and two is less conspicuous than three—"

"Two being you and him?" Melisende's question might have been arch any other day but she hadn't unfolded her arms and her mouth was a thin line. "Ah, yes, nothing screams 'inconspicuous'," she didn't unfold her arms to crook her fingers and Asher swallowed, sending up a prayer for the floor to swallow him, "like the two of you does it?"

"For fuck's sake," Amalia hissed, rolling her shoulders as Asher stepped forward.

"Look, it was—it was a shit move, right? I should've said something but we've got some jobs out of it we can all discuss out when we get back from the thieves tonight and when Nasir and the lads get back from dwarf family dinner. Maybe even a contact that you and Liadan," he shot a look at Amalia as if daring her to argue back with him which to his relief she didn't, "would be better to check out than the two of us for obvious reasons. We should've brought you with us. We're sorry. Doesn't change shit or that it was wrong but we are, aren't we Amalia?"

"Yeah. Yeah. Sorry Melisende." It sounded sincere and that she couldn't quite meet Melisende's gaze helped reassure him that it was. "It's…fuck, last time I tried to say why this mattered so much I made a mess of it and upset you and Liadan, and I didn't mean to or want to do that, and I don't want to do it again but this—this matters. To me. I need to know. It's bigger than me."

Melisende unfolded her arms, looking Liadan up and down as she took a deep breath. "I went over what you didn't bother clearing up last night, made a few notes so maybe you should've bothered to wake me instead of sneaking off but if you tell me what you've got _after_ you get back and we get Liadan, get everything else we can all sit down. Together. Like adults. And friends."

"Family." Amalia was the one to say it, a small hesitant note to it, enough that Asher tapped Bronson and flicked a finger in her direction until he was over, rubbing his huge head against her hip so she could stroke him gently, so gently.

"Family. Bloody dwarven family probably. And have a wash, you stink of horses, what were you even doing? You need to go see the thieves, you can't go smelling like a pair of ragamuffins when we've been out of here so long, get to it."

It wasn't complete forgiveness but Asher didn't expect that as Amalia slipped off first since she'd be able to actually heat up bath water faster than either of them, Asher waiting behind, weighing his options.

"Where's Liadan? Did she have plans today or…"

"Getting her crossbow serviced and you know she doesn't trust anyone alone with it but if I had something as fiddly as all that I doubt I'd be one for letting it out my sight too long either."

"Surprised we didn't pass her then, we came back that way but if she does make it back before we do tonight, same with the lads, can you put the name Brother Deacon about? He's the one who might be worth turning any over about. Didn't recognise him from the last stay and he might even have a real shred of decency in him for that lot."

"Brother Deacon, right. Now go, I want to run a few things by the pair of you before the thieves meeting, miserable shits."

If Asher was getting an out like this after what he'd pulled, even a temporary reprieve, he wasn't about to quibble over it, loping off and up the stairs, hollering for Amalia to heat him up some water too as she swore back at him.


	6. Chapter 6

The undercity was one of several thieves strongholds, supposedly the oldest of them all where they disputed who had come first to claim it, hotly contested with the dwarves who came with their clans after leaving their own homes long ago. Asher and Amalia had passed Yngvi, Gunnar, and Nasir on the way, coming from different entrances down one of the long pathways that were as poorly lit as they ever were because who wanted to waste money on lanterns you didn't need and that might cast a light on what anyone might be up to. No one had time to pause for chat; it wouldn't do for Asher or Amalia to run the risk of being late where it might be taken for a slight if the runners saw them talking to their own en route to the dwarves – the thieves would know they were off that direction, they always did – and Yngvi in particular had the look of someone being marched off for execution, Gunnar's arm about him in brotherly solidarity as Nasir followed just behind, close enough to grab should either of them try bolting.  
  
Asher couldn't blame them, not everyone fancied a homecoming but it wasn't as if they were asking for lodging like they did whenever they stopped off in Riach with his parents so they could suffer a night if it got some work out of it as far as he was concerned.  
  
"You'll be getting it in the neck for days," Amalia whispered as they bypassed a stall that hadn't been there last time, a merchant hawking all sorts of cure-alls from the brief glance they spared him.   
  
"He's not tall enough for that."  
  
"If he stands on Gunnar's shoulders he will be."  
  
"Ah he won't get ideas like that, couple of days to cool off, a few jobs where he can get up to some mischief we'll all be right as rain." Easy to say, less easy to assuage what rose up in him even as he said it but there wasn't much of an option when they'd come to their destination.  
  
It was the quiet that gave away when they'd made the crossing into undisputed thieves territory, soft furtive whispering that even straining his ears Asher couldn't make out though years of fighting where they had and a few too many blows about the head and there was a ringing that never quite subsided, one he'd become more or less accustomed to. Where the dwarven clan, especially Einar's lot signposted their boundaries in more elaborate ways, this drew attention to how much noise an individual made going about their way, every breath, every footfall, the modicum of space between Asher and Amalia as they spared one another glance. Amalia's hackles were up but she'd never liked coming down here so if Asher was going to get it in the neck from anyone later then he'd be getting it from her first, probably the moment they got out. Maybe a drink before they went home – really he should've found out what time the others thought they'd be done, sacrificed some coin to smoothing feathers by putting the rounds in – but it was too late for that now. At least neither of them had to bother with the pointless announcements they went through with some of their clients and contacts, announcing themselves, being kept waiting; time was money, no one needed to be kept waiting when it was a long-standing business arrangement already waiting and soon enough they made their way through the warren that the thieves had carved out or taken over (he'd never gotten a version of it he found satisfactory) and to a comfortable room behind heavy doors with good strong locks.  
  
Doors left unlocked after they were ushered in, a courtesy. But there were enough thieves between two Boneflayers and even the rest of the undercity that they'd never be able to count for them to make it out alive. Even with his weapons and ferocity and Amalia's unbridled magic spewing out chaos all about them.  
  
"Asher, Amalia," from the back of the room and through a door cut into the wall that _had_ to connect to elsewhere in the city, Asher was sure of it, all the Boneflayers were, Yngvi had even been trying to map them for a while last time, "welcome back to Belnesse, we've all missed one another, it certainly does us all good to renew old friendships, doesn't it?"  
  
Esti was a small woman with grey hair that now had a thick streak of white running through at the left hand side, dark-skinned with lines and creases about her eyes and mouth but with canny enough and light on her feet that even now she still seemed a far younger woman. She wore the same dark leathers as the rest of the thieves, a suggestion of weapons that Asher only caught a glimpse of as she settled herself behind her desk, reaching into a drawer for a bottle and glasses.  
  
"Refreshments? I hate to be a rude host and no one wants to talk with a dry throat."  
  
"What've you got there?" Amalia asked, squinting at the bottle.  
  
"Something special out of Virene, they had delays at customs, terrible shame." She poured generous measures of something colourless as water, the three of them taking glasses at the same time to clink together and drink at once.  
  
No one wanted to suggest she wasn't trusted after all.  
  
"Cheers Esti. You're looking well; business has been good." Asher winced as whatever was in the glass burnt up to the back of his nose, Amalia choking next to him and thumping her chest.   
  
Esti grinned at them, swirling the liquor in her glass as she looked them up and down. "Business is always good in Belnesse; didn't Melisende come away well from our meeting? A pretty bonus from a job like that from what little she said." Self-satisfaction curled Esti's lip, lowered her voice and she set the glass down, reclining more comfortably in her seat.  
  
After all, hers was a leather armchair; a huge thing that belonged to the study in a noble's estate, not the smaller, though still ornate, dining chairs Asher and Amalia were sat opposite her in.   
  
"You'll know all about diamonds in the rough, or whatever it was, I've never had much of an eye for that, I leave it to my betters," Asher replied, leaning back comfortably until the chair creaked beneath him, Amalia darting a glance his way.  
  
Esti's mouth thinned ever so slightly at his words. "To business then. You're back then, you've picked up your old lodgings, we knew that before Nasir stepped off the boat—"  
  
"That's creepy, you know that don't you?" Amalia asked, frowning as she took another cautious sip of the drink.  
  
"We have to know who happens to come in and out of our port don't we? Can't have any sort of ruffians who might upset the order after all and people like you might cause quite the ruckus." Esti sighed, leafing through papers after she finished her drink, pouring a second. "If you're happy enough to agree to the usual terms then those still stand: preferred rates, you'll know what we know – within reason, of course – and so long as it doesn't call down undue attention you can call upon our doors for a place to lie low should you need it."  
  
"We don't anticipate that last one but we appreciate the kindness in the offer, I'll be sure to remind everyone." Asher took another drink, the burn still intense, the taste one he couldn't place. Was it even intended to be drunk? Esti wouldn't poison them, he doubted that, and she was drinking too but it could still be anything, couldn't it? Just enough to throw the two of them off. _You're becoming a suspicious old bastard_ , he thought to himself, wishing that Melisende was with them or that she'd said more about whatever had happened when she'd been here to get a decent price for some fencing.  
  
He hadn't realised how bad things stood between her, Liadan, and the thieves, and that was entirely on him.  
  
"How's tricks with the undercity? We've been getting used to everything here – whole bunch of new robes and armour about," Amalia sat forward as she spoke with a creak of leather, hair tossed back from her face. "Wasn't so…settled last time but that's the price of peace ain't it?"  
  
"What's peace good for?" Esti rolled her eyes, sliding forward papers that Asher glanced at before tucking away. No chance he'd be signing them before he had everyone looking over them; contract wording went through too many twists and turns for him to keep up with to be comfortable with that when it involved more than just him. "As if there's ever peace, you know it same as me, brewing same as something foul in an old rich man with gout. No, we've got our part, dwarves have theirs, everyone else falls in line or fights for the scraps and if it's gotten out of line we put them back. But…sometimes we might have a few things we can't be associated with. Not directly."  
  
"Anything we could help you out with at all. The way concerned citizens returned to Belnesse do and if certain interested parties are informed then that's as it may be…" Asher tried not to grimace as he said it. If this was tied up with the dwarves too then whatever they were agreeing to was going to be a very good day with a tidy sum at the end of it or they were stepping into a whole heap of shit they had no business getting involved in.  
  
Melisende and Liadan would've known. He had himself who only knew Esti from strict if fair business conducted previous with all else that came with it and the reputation that she'd carried with her from long before his time that mingled with Liadan's history, all of it deep in the heart of her territory.  
  
"Have a look over this. I'll give you three days to make your mind up and send one of mine to get your answer either way, expect some sort of delivery, let the rest of yours know and don't make a fuss about it. Anything else?"  
  
Amalia looked over at Asher who nodded, tossing back the last of his drink, the empty glass set down on the desk to watch Amalia do likewise as if she were steeling herself. Maybe she was. He wasn't used to this sort of desperation in her before, wondering if he'd been missing it when she'd had so much laid out already so early into their stay, but it was done now, too late for any of them to go taking it back.  
  
"If anything turns up about Order business and mages, Belnesse specifically, I'd—I'd appreciate," the word grated, Asher fighting the urge to lay a hand upon her shoulder as it came out, knowing how difficult it was for her to say it to someone like Esti, "if I found out. Don't know if it factors into what we've got, you can discuss it with whoever comes by or set up a side thing it's just…a matter I'm looking into."  
  
"We're looking into."  
  
It was worth adding it for Amalia's look of relief and gratitude. For her smile. And to make sure Esti didn't pull her teeth trying to get coin out her alone because when it mattered to someone personally then he knew damn well how the thieves operated. He'd heard enough horror stories in his time.   
  
"There's been mages smuggling themselves here, for what it's worth – we've got our fair share of them, more than that really but they're useful. Or they make themselves useful. I suppose it's not so dissimilar to those who choose to live a life that produced a girl like you, Amalia." Esti smiled but something lurked in her voice, something soft and almost troubled if Asher had to put a name to it as Amalia frowned, shifting in her seat. "They get the dwarves in on it too but dwarves don't need mages for anything, just the money or goods they can provide, it's a strictly dwarven operation and those are their terms, it's done them well so who can argue with that after all?  
  
"But I don't need every mage that washes up in Belnesse, not all of them want to stay, not all of them want in this sort of life, you can imagine how it goes. Some of them just want a life. To go be whatever 'normal' people are to them somewhere far away from wherever they were and Belnesse is apparently a good buffer between wherever they've come from and there. Or a good place to hide, large as it is, with all the rumours that abound."   
  
As Esti spoke, Amalia finished her drink and wordlessly, Esti refilled both their glasses, topping up her own which she regarded for a while until she continued. "There's always guards about at the docks but there's been an understanding for years now," she waved a hand, an airy gesture to encompass how far back such a deal went, "but then it changed. Rates went up. Even then blind eyes stopped being turned. The Order themselves began to be present at the docks for whatever reason and I've not been able to find out why. I don't _like_ not knowing what goes on in my own city. You know the last time they came down here was when the worst of the fighting pushed the refugees in, had us all swamped and the violence was terrible. Einar and I finally shored up all our boundaries and truces then."  
  
"I didn't know that was so recent," Asher admitted; Yngvi and Gunnar would've been boys at the time, Liadan might have been skulking about but he'd need to catch her in the mood to find out. "I thought— Well I don't know what I thought, honestly."  
  
"Better that you don't. We had our turf, they had theirs, we had cordial agreements. But that was oil upon the fire and it necessitated that we band together and go into battle to remind everyone who Belnesse's undercity belonged to lest they get any grand ideas. Where do you think tributes and smaller outfits report to?"  
  
"Shit…glad none of us were down here then." Amalia whistled through her teeth, sounding impressed by it all and it was hard not to be when they had some inkling of the numbers that would've been involved; you didn't have to like it to still have some sort admiration for all that had been done. "None of that's good then, if you don't know and the Order's involved and mages are just, what, disappearing once they get off the boats?"  
  
"Not even any record of them whatsoever."  
  
"How the fuck is there no record?" Asher struggled to keep the anger out of his voice, hand tightening around his glass. Anger wouldn't help but it flared to life regardless.  
  
"We sort them out through our contacts, you know how all this works with your own so I don't need to explain it to you, and give them false records to better help them. They're not cheap but they don't need to pay it all up front if they can't I'm not a complete monster no matter what Liadan might say," Esti sniffed, her eyes daring Asher to say more but he refused to take the bait no matter how satisfying it would be. "And we've got people about. On ships and that. I always have thieves on ships, that's how it works. They see them. To make sure they can't just sneak off without paying their debts but the Order makes it so that not only was that person never on that ship, they were never even on the manifest."  
  
"So much for everything they've ever said about honesty," Amalia muttered, tossing back her drink in one go, screwing her whole face up.  
  
"Like anyone really believes that who doesn't need their head sorted," Asher snapped, downing his as well, eyes watering. "We'll…we'll look into that Esti – fuck me that could strip the paint off walls – and get sorted with the contract. Anything else just send someone, you know where we are, we know where you are."  
  
"Keep an eye for the mages both of you, I've got a lot of them about. Last thing I need is for any of mine to start going missing."  
  
Esti dismissed them with a wave of the hand, Asher rising on unsteady legs that only had a little to do with the drink in him as he headed out, Amalia on his heels, neither of them saying a word until they were out of thieves territory, out of the undercity, back in the open night smog of Belnesse that clung wetly to them, Asher leaning back against a foundry wall as Amalia bent forward, head between her knees.  
  
"I'm going to be sick," she groaned and Asher pushed himself off the wall, rubbing her back until she smacked his hands away.  
  
"I was going to say pub but home?"  
  
"Home," she agreed, about as miserable as she looked, the pair of them setting off on shaky legs back, saying nothing at all even as his head buzzed the whole time, the anger rolling in his gut, fingers itching as they passed an Order knight in gleaming armour on the way who paused to say something at them that Asher never heard.  
  


* * *

  
  
It was the next morning before anyone was in a state to talk over what they'd all gained from their respective days; Liadan and Melisende had been bent over the plans when Asher and Amalia had gotten home, ready to say something only for Amalia to race off to vomit, retiring to bed after Liadan had checked up on her, Asher retreating off with his axe to swing it mindlessly in the empty space that served as somewhere to train, wishing they'd gotten some practice dummies when there was only empty air, nothing concrete or solid. But he didn't go to the pub, despite the urge, not when that'd land him in a cell for the night and put them behind with work. Nasir, Yngvi, and Gunnar had come home later than they'd expected, Nasir probably checking on Amalia when someone told him what went on, Gunnar had popped his head out to get Asher to come in, and Yngvi had gone straight to bed too.  
  
No one had had a happy day or night but he'd left the contract with Melisende and Liadan who at least had clear heads and had agreed that the wording hadn't changed, only some bits about money that everyone agreed to first and foremost when they were all gathered around over a late breakfast; Asher wasn't the only one with a hangover of some description from the looks of it.  
  
"We're all in agreement about terms with the thieves so despite them being run by cunts," Liadan said brightly with a clap of the hands that had half the table wincing, "we've got that squared away. Our whole dealings with dwarves aren't quite so concrete so shall we start there since we never really got to that last night?"  
  
"Same old, same old. Happy to help us out but for the usual rates of money, goods, services rendered all that sort of thing. We'd get something more permanent if we all agreed to help agents elsewhere to which we said-"  
  
"Bugger that for a lark." Yngvi interrupted his brother, a dark look flitting across his face. "What? They don't need some big play just dad was being his usual pushy prick self and it was no dad fuck off."  
  
" _Right_ ," Liadan continued, rolling her eyes, "job offers, work, I think we do that next so we know what we've got on the table. I know there's another item of business but I just want to get to this in case it helps us out there and doesn't cloud anyone's thinking."  
  
"There's a job me and Asher definitely got from our dearest of chums—"  
  
" _Chums_?" Nasir echoed softly into his coffee. "Oh Amalia."  
  
"Yes, our dear sweet chums from the Order, can you believe they're having some issues with shipments. Which is going to get funnier a little later on so, y'know, just wait for that one."  
  
"There's a few other things that'll help out with the thing that's coming up later and y'know, good to have that sort of coin because the coffers overflow where the holy hands go," Asher continued, wiping the last of the egg from his plate with a smile.  
  
"Asher that was…honestly beautiful," Melisende was trying not to laugh, her mouth pulling tight at the corner.  
  
"I try, bound to happen now and again. I reckon it's worth it. Gets our faces out there too so they might call on us again and Amalia pointed out to me about making us look better and they talk, had a bit of time to think and there's a fair lot of folk elsewhere who go in for all their nonsense so it might serve us well to swallow our pride and whatever else and pitch in."  
  
"That means you can't go drinking the holy wine." Melisende pointed out, eyebrows raised. "Or go streaking through a cathedral. Or fight any of them. Or flirt with the initiates. Or—"  
  
"Right, right, I know, I know, my reputation—"  
  
"We'll be here all day. Next!" Liadan evidently hadn't been drinking from how happy she was to raise her voice amongst the suffering around her, writing everything down as she went. "Anything else from a family dinner?"  
  
"Smuggling job if we're up for it which I wouldn't mind, personally, you know how I love that and we so rarely get to do anything like that these days, it's a dying art." Nasir almost sounded wistful, and with his chin propped up on his hand, hair mussed as if he'd not bothered with it since getting out of bed in a way that looked tasteful on him but bedraggled on all others, it was a crime there wasn't an artist among them to capture it. "I suppose Belnesse is one of the best places _for_ any sort smuggling and we've been away but the great Hulda herself would be a part of it, a living legend!"  
  
"It'd be fun doing something with Hulda," Yngvi admitted, dragging himself up from a slouch that almost had him sliding clean out his seat onto the floor. "Nothing too bad, just some weapons for us but more than one dwarf can really handle and the newest crop of young ones are, sad to say, shit."  
  
"Don't know what they've been trying to teach them but it's embarrassing, that age and not a smuggler amongst them, all scrappers." Gunnar shook his head. "Jim thought he was being roped in. _Jim_ , can you believe."  
  
"No. No I cannot." Melisende spoke up when no one else would; as soon as neither brother looked her way she caught Asher's eye, mouthing _who the fuck is Jim?_ and he choked on his coffee, coughing until his eyes watered.  
  
"And I've got something we can maybe look into that I picked up getting the crossbow serviced, some thefts and replacements going on, cost-cutting with parts and raw goods." Liadan sat back in her seat, drawing a neat line beneath her notes. "Melisende did you want to…or do Amalia and Asher make more sense…"  
  
"I think Amalia should bring us up to speed then we can build from there, what I'm going to add won't make sense without what she's saying and some of this might all tie together because it's Belnesse, what isn't shit and rotten here."  
  
"Amalia?" Liadan prodded, a smile of encouragement on her face as she sat with her pen poised to take down more notes. "Do you need to go get anything first, or—"  
  
"No. No I'm…I'm good, I can get through this." Taking a deep breath, Amalia launched into her explanation that she'd given Asher, no one daring to interrupt her throughout as she added in what Esti had gone through with them too though she left out anything about the possibility of jobs involving the Order. That tended to be the deal unless something was too urgent to ignore, rare as those cases tended to be.  
  
At some point she'd grabbed for Nasir's hand, squeezing it tight enough for her knuckles to have turned white, Bronson having deserted Asher's side to rest his head on her knee; he always knew when someone was upset, whining in a way that huge dogs shouldn't be able to but could until she let go, stroking his head as her breath shuddered out of her. No one spoke until Melisende left the table to grab through papers, gesturing for someone to clear space and Asher wordlessly cleared up abandoned breakfast dishes through to the kitchen, sweeping up crumbs so it'd be as clean as he could manage for her to work with.  
  
"Liadan and I had a look into that Brother Deacon you both ran into up there," she said to start with, a combined effort spread before them as everyone bent their heads closer about the table. "And he's an interesting one, funny the ones that _did_ have anything bad to say about him were the kind that he's had words with for being rough with those who don't have means to protect themselves; he gives out aid to those who need it but he's not shy about protecting his flock. Some of the higher-ups are wary of him, think maybe he's got other orders going on but that's something else under investigation."  
  
"It's interesting that the Order are involved in all this shipping thing if they're also needing things done for them too unless that's a front," Liadan pointed out. "I don't like admitting that Esti'll have the right of it but she will, her and the port authorities are like that," she crossed her middle and index fingers over one another, "so if they're saying they've got shipments delayed, Esti's saying the knights are down there where the mages'd be getting off the boats and who knows who else because like hell she's giving you the whole story then there's…there's something going on."  
  
"Why d'you think we got a smuggling job that needs more bodies." Gunnar piping up drew all eyes to him as he tapped fingers against the table.   
  
"She couldn't come right out and say it but after all this then...yeah. We get people where they need to be if they can pay us for it and none of you heard it from us cause Esti and her lot don't need to know but now and again we need to have mages what owe us," Yngvi added, maybe a little shamefaced about it if Asher was any judge.  
  
"I know enough people about that whole area to be able to chat and they did seem, well, they're twitchy and superstitious at the best of times but I didn't know what to make of how funny they were being. Hard to tell when you've been away if more bodies in armour is a recent development and there's not an easy way to ask without giving too much away is there?" Nasir sighed, clicking his tongue. "I can get on that, I definitely want to do the smuggling job with Hulda since we can all agree I'm probably the man for it – Liadan, Yngvi? I think we'd be the team to head off with her although I defer to the expert there."  
  
Yngvi pulled a face, startled, and tried to recover himself at being asked. Or being called the expert. Gunnar hid a smile behind his hand. "I mean Melisende'd be good but she's not got anything ranged on her has she? I don't but I know Hulda better'n the rest of you so I'm by default. We just—we launching into jobs then?"  
  
"It's all connected, the way this is shaping up then whatever Amalia's found in looking it up then in Belnesse at the very least it's connected, who knows what else we'll find wherever we go next, it'd be a risk to try sending out word since when have you ever trusted a single courier in or out of here?" Melisende stared Yngvi down as if daring Yngvi to defy her but he didn't.  
  
"Jim's involved."  
  
"Brunswick too," Gunnar added with a chuckle.  
  
"Sorry," Amalia interrupted with a hand up, "but who in the fuck are these people."  
  
"Siblings."  
  
"Asher," Nasir said finally when no one else would, "they really are your boys aren't they?"  
  


* * *

  
  
"I'm—"  
  
"If you complain about freezing your balls off one more time I'll get Amalia to roast them." Melisende huffed, hands tucked up under her armpits just like Asher, shoulders up, little clouds of breath as she spoke. Her feet were scuffing back and forth, lifting up and down restlessly on the spot. He thought, if he looked close, that he could see her toes curling beneath the tight-fitted leather.   
  
Weeks had passed since their return to Belnesse and the beginnings of some larger scheme that Amalia had unravelled before them that was interspersed with smaller jobs for the usual coin, or goods, or favours, whatever they decided on as the going rate. A few heavies looming over stallholders, some protection rackets, calling in debts on behalf of the thieves to remind certain individuals just where their friends and associates might be found, and then jobs like the one he and Melisende found themselves on tonight, out in the cold night air with slender fingers of mist curled about their ankles as they waited to go poking about a warehouse. One that might be empty. Or not. Einar had been vague on that front, not that they'd expected much more, he was never too giving when it came to them when they'd been out of the cities for as long as they had. Asher cast an eye out over the water, dark and still. Somewhere Yngvi, Nasir, and Liadan were off with Hulda at whatever the smuggling job involved: they'd all wanted to keep it hush-hush, eager to return with an epic tale when all was said and done.  
  
Somewhere else, Gunnar and Amalia were helping out a small outbreak of pox. Painstaking goodwill gestures to get people talking. Just enough.  
  
 _Just like the earliest of the old days_ , he told himself as he longed to hunker down next to Bronson who was warm against his thigh where he stood, ready and waiting for the word to spring into action. Melisende watched in the dark for figures moving, some of them small and slight; perish the thought that they, the Boneflayers, would be entirely alone in this operation, at least at the start of things. That Yngvi and Gunnar had been good enough to give descriptions of their siblings was a blessing as a few passed out of the building with hand signals Asher recognised but didn't know.  
  
Two women left, one who put him in mind of a thief and looked to be about Yngvi's age with thick black curls escaping a scarf, chattering away to one smaller but older about the face, lines heavier set. They spared the briefest of glances to Asher and Melisende as if seeing old friends then hurried off.  
  
"And that's our cue, shall we?" Melisende untucked her hands, rolling her shoulders as she stepped forward, Asher in her wake.  
  
"Hope it's warmer in there than out here."  
  
"It's a Belnesse warehouse," she whispered as they slipped inside, the door helpfully left unlocked by the dwarves. That had been agreed by Einar via his sons after all. They'd leave a light on, as it were.   
  
His breath fogged the air when he followed Melisende inside, untucked his hands and rubbing them together until she elbowed him sharply right in the sternum, a withering look over her shoulder.  
  
"What? I'm cold. Look at these hands!" He held them close for inspection, just about able to see in the poor light that the nails were blue bordering on purple where they weren't white, no blood thumping away and for him? A lad out of Riach used to the cold who did well up in mountains where they froze solid for the winter months? Maybe he was getting soft. They'd need to go back. Let his blood remind itself where it was from.  
  
"You'll start a fire doing that, state of you." She tutted, disgusted, and headed in leaving him to slip the door shut behind them once Bronson was in too, a few careful gestures to have the dog falling back. "What sort of warehouse did they say this was again? That _smell_."  
  
Asher swallowed wetly, resisting the urge to tug his shirt up from under his leathers to cover his nose. He probably couldn't anyway but that was a powerful stench slapping them in the face, a thick oppressive damp undercut with filth and rotting vegetation, musky, catching in the back of the throat. "Just a warehouse, lot of facial expressions and eyebrow action came into it."  
  
Melisende snorted. He imagined her rolling her eyes as she so often did before she went about to inspect for traps, Asher stepping only where she stepped; they might be working with the dwarves but no one had said a damned thing, either out of forgetfulness or other reasons, and there was no reason to assume that they'd tell them if the place would be trapped or not. It never hurt to check and it was only when Melisende stepped that he did, a hand on Bronson's collar to keep the dog neatly in step with him, murmuring softly to him. Until Bronson growled, a sound Asher felt rather than heard that had him tapping Melisende's elbow.  
  
"His hackles are up," he whispered, loosening his grip on the hound as Melisende turned back to them both, cursing soundlessly.  
  
"You think someone's here?" Already she had her daggers out, sleek and dangerous as she nodded back at her. "For fuck's sake, fucking-- Should've known it wouldn't be simple. We going for it then?"  
  
"Just like old times isn't it."  
  
"There's a reason we spent the whole time looking for people and got who we got."  
  
"I know. But we managed. And we'll manage again."  
  
There was something comical about having a conversation like this in a darkened warehouse with a growling mass of fur and muscle straining next to him, just waiting for the word to unleash him as he unsheathed his axe – Belnesse couldn't be blessed for many things but not a soul batted an eye when you wandered about armed to the teeth if you were human enough to their eyes – and swung it loosely.   
  
"Jumpy pair, they said that but—"  
  
Asher and Melisende both swore, Asher almost dropping the axe in his haste to haul Bronson back from launching off to attack, his teeth bared, slobber flying everywhere as a small dwarf appeared out by the door, a grin on her freckled face as she pushed back her hood.   
  
"For _fuck's_ sake," Melisende hissed, eyes narrowed to slits as she stalked forward with her blades out, Asher dropping to one knee to try soothing Bronson. Of course the dog was having none of it, the rumbling growl that of a hornet's nest given a brutal and swift kicking, vibrating up through his chest and along Asher's arm wrapped about him, fingers spread across his ribs. "You left."  
  
" _We_ left," it was the younger of the two dwarves who stepped forward, her dark hair out of her face. "I came back. Do you think you'd be getting free run of the place?"  
  
"Well that's how it sounded to us." Asher gritted his teeth, bending forward to murmur again at Bronson.   
  
"It isn't our fault you didn't clear up any and all misunderstandings, perhaps take it up with either of my brothers." She smiled, charming, just a young lady making polite conversation though she skirted about Bronson carefully, just enough of a margin to without being obvious about it even if Asher wagered the dog was about three or four times her weight, easy. "Shall we?"  
  
"You knew we wouldn't be alone." Melisende pivoted, stalking forward with Erna hot on her heels, scurrying to catch up with her longer stride as Asher rose and brought up the rear, still holding Bronson even as it made his arm ache from the strain of it.   
  
"We—"  
  
"Enough with the royal we, dad's not here is he?" Asher groused, rolling his shoulders.  
  
"Not that you know of." Erna sounded entirely too cheerful about that one. "Come on, chop chop, we're burning money here after all – you want to get paid and continue the same repeat business don't you?"  
  
"Never should've scooped those two out the gutter Asher," Melisende muttered but there wasn't any heat in it, at least not towards the absent dwarves who were hopefully having a better time of it than them. "Where's your friend?"  
  
"Keeping a lookout just in case you've lost your edge. It's been a while and we've…vested interests, let's leave it at that."  
  
"Of course you do. Right, what are we expecting here, do we get to know that at least?"  
  
Erna turned, beaming up at Asher in a way that reminded him of Yngvi and Gunnar, something that had to run in Einar's whole family and it was disarming in some way, how it put him at ease even when it shouldn't, when he only knew her from fragments of stories shared over the years. But she knew. She'd been in here. They – or at least – had to put _something_ in whatever she knew, faith or otherwise, and if she was running the job then Erna clearly had the skill. Whatever that was. Sleek leathers, a hint of blades…  
  
Footsteps neither of them had noticed until she'd spoken.   
  
"No traps that I found down there – Oda disarmed them, it's why she was here, she's trained in that and it doesn't hurt you to know it I don't think. But there are…competing interests for the contents of the warehouse. And we can't have it damaged. You're armed. I'm armed. We can take it in turns if needed."  
  
Melisende was quiet as they approached the doorway that opened out onto a landing where a foreman might be during the day, all of them holding their breath, looking and listening but not a soul seemed to be there for the moment. "This is where the rest of them are coming," Melisende said it with a resigned surety. "The smuggling job. It opens out onto the water," she pointed down to where the moonlight rippled over water dark as spilled ink, Asher holding in the groan. "That's why. In case there are assassins. From either side. Because they're smuggling this onto the boat with whatever else they've picked up on the way."  
  
Erna didn't answer. Instead she raised her arm and threw a knife that went whistling through the air to land in the throat of a figure Asher hadn't seen until they wheezed, crumpling to the ground in a heap. All remained quiet until someone swore below them.  
  
He let Bronson go, charging after him with his axe drawn, Melisende and Erna hot on his heels.


End file.
